


Black and White

by LonelyOnly



Series: Solve et Coagula [1]
Category: Venom (Comics), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Angst, BDSM, Body Worship, Cannibalism, Dom/sub, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Falling In Love, Feelings, Fluff, Gore, M/M, Other, Plot, Recreational Drug Use, Repression, Sharing a Body, Slow Burn, Smut, Tentacle Sex, Vigilantism, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:27:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 34,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24539230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LonelyOnly/pseuds/LonelyOnly
Summary: The sweet, metallic tang of blood still lingered along the length of their tongue, serpentine. It lashed the air like a sword, tasting the stale night, before receding behind rows upon rows of razor fangs.Still hungry.---“We’ve been together for more than four months”, the symbiote complained.“Been together, huh?”, their human host replied, “Well, even if you wanna put it like that, four months isn’t very long for a relationship. That takes time.”“We would wait forever for you.”
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Series: Solve et Coagula [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1773526
Comments: 40
Kudos: 345





	1. Black and White

**Author's Note:**

> Be prepared to feel things, all the things. Good and bad.
> 
> This will be a novel-length, two-part series about two idiots in love, sharing a body. There will be plot, there will be fluff, there will be angst, and yes, there will be smut.
> 
> Each chapter will alternate between Venom and Eddie's POV.
> 
> Bold text is Venom (with quotes is spoken out loud, without is thoughts); unquoted italicized text is Eddie's thoughts.

*** VENOM ***

The sweet, metallic tang of blood still lingered along the length of their tongue, serpentine. It lashed the air like a sword, tasting the stale night, before receding behind rows upon rows of razor fangs. 

The rancid, green-brown smell of bagged trash from the nearby alley dumpster intermingled with the putrid crimson of the remains of their corpse meal, torso half-eaten out, head entirely missing. Sharp-taloned hands had excavated most of the tasty innards. 

**Still hungry.**

Together, they rose as Venom, half-symbiote, half-man, a bulking shadow towering over the lady paralyzed with fear, a few meters away, clutching tightly at her purse. Her wide eyes were met with their unintentionally predatory gaze, two white crescents stretching to either side of their head, running parallel to their face-splitting grin. In the very next moment, she must have remembered how to run. 

**“You’re welcome”** , they said after her, voice deep, gravelly, and less than welcoming. 

Other than a stray dog barking in the distance, and the fading scampered getaway, it was peacefully quiet in The Tenderloin, where there were always tasty snacks. They always felt good after a hunt. _They_ even included Eddie, although he wouldn’t admit it. A brief guilt throbbed between their mutual inner bond. 

The massive monstrosity swiftly scaled the alley wall to the roof with the agility of a squirrel. Their host wore their inky biomass like a second skin, Klyntar quantum strings spliced with human muscle fibers. 

Their matter was not quite solid, not quite liquid, but more like the strings of a musical instrument, less in their strand-like nature, but more so in their constant vibration. The symbiote was pure motion, thrice-overlapping quantum symphonies singing into a pattern of emergent complexity to mimic the illusion of structure and solidity. They were substantial enough to function as a liquid, though they were not wet to the touch. 

**You are… regretting this one, Eddie.**

_I think I’m just tired, V… Let’s call it a night?,_ their human host thought. 

Blending with the darkness, they dashed along the rooftops. Against the dizzying heights, Eddie retracted inwardly, comfortable to let Venom drive their body. Eddie did not like heights. 

**Eddie. We’re sorry our kind feeds on-**

_No, Venom, it’s- it’s okay. ‘Sides, who knows what woulda… with that woman- I mean this asshole! He was after more than just her purse!_

**Yes. He is the Bad Guy. We are the Hero. We only eat Bad Guys.**

_Err, yeah… somethin’ like that._

**Is that not what you said before?**

_It… is. Let’s just… home, yeah? We’ll talk about this later._

Their host’s remorse was forgotten as they bounded towards home… that is, what Eddie called ‘home’: the same small apartment they’d spent most of their time in. 

For the symbiote, though, Eddie _is_ home. So wherever they went, Venom always felt at home, even while Eddie never did. How to show him that, with them, together as ‘We’, the world _was_ their home? Was _theirs._ Together, they were unstoppable. 

The streetlights ornamented the city beneath them. It was beautiful; this was becoming clearer now. Because this is Eddie’s home, it was beautiful. The symbiote had initially come to this planet on a recon mission led by their team leader Riot to scout out food. That’s all the Klyntar cared about, and all they saw their hosts as. That’s why Venom was seen as a bit of a loser with their kind. And now, they were a traitor, too. 

**No regrets** , they thought to themselves. 

If the Klyntar ever tried to attack Earth, Venom would fight them, for Eddie. Earth was their home now. 

Venom sent Eddie a warm, homely feeling that said, **Our home.**

Eddie mistook it literally. 

_I hear ya, buddy. Home. Bed, really. I gotta go into the office tomorrow morning._

The symbiote did not understand the complexities of jobs and money, but he trusted Eddie when he said he had to do it to continue acquiring chocolate and tater tots… ‘legally’. Venom was trying his best to understand the notion of human morality, because it was something Eddie deeply cared about. Sometimes this matched ‘the law’, and sometimes, it didn’t. Either way though, for Venom, it all just boiled down to ambiguous rules about who was okay to eat, and who was off limits. 

Before drawing nearer to their busier neighbourhood, they had dropped down behind a dumpster, and their black Klyntar biomass receded back under human skin. Eddie strolled into the street in his black hoodie and jeans. Though permeating every fiber of their human’s body, most of the symbiote’s weight, their core mass, was nestled in his chest cavity. Eddie’s Heart Cave. The place where they belong. 

With a discreet tendril, they handed Eddie the bluetooth earpiece from his pocket, which he popped into his ear. 

“Thanks, V”, Eddie said out loud. 

**You’re welcome** , the symbiote spoke internally by stimulating their human’s auditory nerve. 

Venom could not quite make out Eddie’s thoughts while not in their fully-embodied form, when they were ‘We’, unless Eddie concentrated and directed the thoughts at Venom. It was easier for Eddie to just talk out loud. 

Eddie checked his phone. The LCD display triggered a mix of chemical brain reactions, corresponding to what Eddie called ‘emotions’. Venom was starting to figure out the names of some of these. Now there was: Hope, and Regret. At the same time. One tasted better than the other. 

“Text from Annie. She’s inviting us over for dinner on Friday… with Dan, of course.” 

After a moment, Venom brings up the subject. 

**Whenever you think about Anne, it makes you feel things. Good and bad.**

“‘Course, V. We have history together. She was someone special to me, but I- I betrayed her trust. And I didn’t realize what I had until I’d lost it.” 

**Like with us.** **After the explosion.**

Heat flushed Eddie’s cheeks. 

“Sorta like that, yeah. You make me… feel things too, buddy.” 

**Good or bad?**

“Good. Definitely good”, he said without hesitation, then added, “You can feel that, though, right?” 

**Yes. We feel what you feel. But we like hearing you say it.**

Eddie’s cheek temperature increased. 

**Eddie you are blushing.**

“Just… warm, that’s all.” 

**We keep you warm, with the heightened metabolism.**

“Anyways… so, uh… I was thinking we should tell her. Then. At the dinner. Well, Dan too… he deserves to know, I suppose.” 

**About us?**

“Yeah, I think the time is right… finally.” 

**You decided to, as they say, ‘grow some balls’.**

“Least I _have_ balls, ya slimebag!” 

**Huh. Hadn’t noticed.**

“I hope you don’t”, he blurted, “…notice”, then stammered, “I mean, because it’s none of your business.” 

His cheeks were red-hot now. 

**Everything of yours is our business.**

Since they shared a body, it was odd for Eddie to maintain the idea of ‘privates’, and he always changed the subject when it was about a particular anatomical organ. So he did. 

“Hey, V, back there, that- that guy had a… a what? A gun, right? You saw?” 

**A knife.**

“Ehh… close enough.” 

**Enough to be edible.**

Venom noticed that Eddie didn’t like to draw Venom’s attention to that particular organ, and its associated reproductive system. That only made the symbiote more curious as to why. But before they could comment, they drew nearer to their block, and they decided to tug at Eddie towards Mrs. Chen’s convenience store. 

“Ugh… we can go tomorrow. I just wanna sleep right now.” 

**No. Kitchen is not stocked. We’re still hungry.**

“ _Fine_ ”, he sighed, “it’s almost closing though.” 

They entered the store, bell chiming. Mrs. Chen was sweeping the floor with a bored look on her face. But her expression, and her reflective spectacles, brightened when she looked up to see who it was. 

“Eddie! Here to restock?” 

Eddie gave her an embarrassed smile, “Yeah. Big guy’s hungry. Don’t wanna be starved at work tomorrow. Might eat that intern kid.” 

The aisles were lined with so much variety of food, dominated by the smell of bread and boxes. Venom often wanted to just start devouring food, not understanding what the difference was between food that was ‘paid for’ and ‘not paid for’. But they liked Mrs. Chen, so they didn’t. 

Eddie bagged several bars of dark chocolate, and threw in some tater tots, eggs, and milk. At the counter, Mrs. Chen scanned their items. 

“20% discount on all chocolate, for my favorite _customers._ ” 

Plural. 

**Mrs. Chen is very nice.**

“Oh, you don’t have to do that”. 

Eddie said that every time. 

“I mean, I have a job now, so-” 

**Eddie. Why do you say ‘No’ to cheap chocolate?**

She maintained, “Stop it! I _insist_. Don’t want big guy eating intern.” 

“Aw, thanks, Mrs. C. _Big guy_ , here, says you’re very nice.” 

Venom swam around happily in his chest. 

As soon as they had paid, Venom protruded a head like a demented dragon from the chest, snatched and swallowed a whole chocolate bar, with the wrapper. 

“Uhm, manners!” Eddie lightly pushed away their face. 

Mrs. Chen was briefly startled, but then grinned. 

“Hey, Venom.” 

**“Hello, Mrs. Chen”** , the dragon greeted. 

Grabbing the bags, Eddie turned towards the door. “You tell us if anymore wannabes come around to bring you trouble.” 

**“So we can eat them”.**

“And leave another mess on my floor?”, she quipped. 

Eddie waved behind them as they exited, bell chiming. 

* 

Outside their apartment door, Venom formed tendrils to hold the bags, and fetch the keys from their pocket, handing them to Eddie. 

“Thanks, V”. 

**“You’re welcome”.**

Back inside, they flicked on the lights, and Eddie kicked his shoes off onto the dusty wooden floor, while Venom’s tendrils sorted their groceries into cabinets, fridge, and hungry mouth. Eddie stripped off his jeans and hoodie, tossing them on the sofa. 

Through the windows, they could see that it had just started to rain lightly. Good timing for them. 

Eddie wrinkled his nose, “God, this place is a mess.” 

Strewn about the floor were other worn clothes; his sweaty t-shirt soon joined them. The apartment was bathed in many smells, but the predominant smell, by far, was Eddie. It smelled like Home. 

Boxer-clad, Eddie wandered into the washroom, with Venom condensing to a small bouncy orb-like head on his shoulder. 

**“You don’t have to brush your teeth. We’ve already suffocated all the bacteria in your mouth.”**

“I swear there’s still chunks, urgh, I feel gross.” 

While brushing his teeth, he emptied his bladder, splashing and burbling in the toilet bowl. Venom’s head had slipped down to his navel region to inspect the yellowy discharge from the appendage between his hips. 

Eddie yelped, “A little privacy, buddy?”, he spits out his toothpaste into the brewing concoction. 

This wasn’t the first time Venom took an interest in the urinary process. 

**“What is there to hide, Eddie? We share everything. It is our job to know everything about how your body works.”**

Venom was curious about every biological function of Eddie’s system. More than curious, it was their _job_ to know how every part functioned, in order to keep their host healthy, optimal, and, yes, also: happy. 

“It’s just weird, alright? Not used to being stared at while going.” 

**“We’re always watching.”**

“That’s… a little creepy, V”, he sighed, “Look, sometimes, a guy just wants to keep some activities… solo. A ‘Me’ thing, _remember_?” 

**“Not a ‘We’ thing.”**

“ _Exactly_!” 

**“No. Get it? A ‘wee’ thing.”**

Eddie rolled his eyes, then smirked. 

“Y’know that was pretty good, actually”, he remarked, patting their orb-head still at his navel. 

They rippled into a purr, which continued to reverberate across their host’s body, causing him to shiver slightly. 

When they entered the bedroom, Eddie just flopped down onto the bed, Venom cushioning him with some of their matter. The springy mattress was not the softest. Their host suddenly remembered how tired he was. 

**“Good night, Eddie.”**

_“Mhmph... g’night, V”_ , Eddie mumbled half-asleep. 

Through their bond, they felt their host slip quickly into unconsciousness. 

**“Sweet dreams, dearest Eddie.”**

Venom would be watching Eddie’s dreams later. They were often _not_ sweet. First, though… 

They sprouted a snake-like head from Eddie’s abdomen and stretched into the kitchen to rummage through the cabinets, undoing their prior sorting. They devoured two more whole bars of dark chocolate. Then, they opened the fridge, and devoured a half-finished pack of bacon, past the expiry date. 

**That should do, for now.**

Then they logged onto Eddie’s laptop on the bed to do research with makeshift dino-arms, typing quietly to not wake Eddie. They liked to learn about the human anatomy. There was lots to know. Eddie had said Dan spent over a decade learning about human anatomy in order to become a surgeon. And Dan was human. 

Venom felt like they had an advantage though, even though they were not human. Through symbiosis, with Eddie, they became more human, and Eddie became more Klyntar, and together they became ‘We’. 

They also liked to read about what the internet people were saying about them. Not about Edward Charles Allan Brock, the ex-reporter of the cancelled “Brock Report”. No. About _Venom_. 

It has been over four months since their reunion, and they’d went out hunting about every week or so. Initially, they were not so discreet, drunk on their own power, whenever they were ‘We’. But as reports and footage of San Fransisco’s own local ‘cryptid’ started surfacing online, mostly on niche message boards, Eddie told them that they needed to start being more careful. 

They were always discreet when masking and unmasking, so none of the reports mentioned Eddie Brock, and of the footage they saw, they were mostly faint black blurs, barely recognizable. They were never caught feasting, though some people drew the connection between the shadowy monster, and the decapitated gangsters. 

They gave them many names. Black Death. Nightcrawler. The Man-Eater. The San Francisco Freak. The Demon of San Francisco. Of these names, the most popular one to catch on seemed to be ‘The Stalking Shadow’. 

**Good names** , they thought. 

Still, they liked the name Maria gave them better, when they had been bonded for a short period. Sticking with that name felt like honoring her, even though she had not spoken it fondly. Her body’s immune system had reacted to the symbiote as just that: Venom. 

An hour later, they logged off and returned to nestle on Eddie’s chest, bobbing up and down as it rose and fell. Venom enjoyed watching, hearing, and feeling Eddie breathe. In... and out… and in... and out. It was calming. Although Eddie easily got bored trying to watch his own breath, something Mrs. Chen pestered him to try, Venom lived for it. Eddie’s breath. _Our_ breath. 

Although they shared a body and mind, Venom sometimes had trouble understanding Eddie’s complicated thought processes. They could always feel what Eddie felt: all of his physiological responses were an open book. Venom sensed which neurotransmitters were binding to which receptors, even before Eddie knew what he was feeling. 

Thoughts though… the brain was overly-complicated. What Eddie thought and said did not always match up with how he felt. He had asked them not to mess around with his brain, and so they respected that. But beyond that, Eddie also still tried to hide some of his thoughts and memories from Venom. He said he needed it, this thing called ‘privacy’. A truly alien concept for any Klyntar. 

Eddie had forgotten to set his alarm for tomorrow. No matter. Venom never slept, and would wake him up at the proper time. Now to settle in for the long night ahead. They continued riding the wave of Eddie’s soft, breathing chest. Venom could watch Eddie breathe forever, and indeed, they intended to keep Eddie breathing for as long as possible. 

Venom breathed in the totality of Eddie’s being, and thought, 

**Mine.**

***


	2. Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five months ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning at endnotes. Clicking the following link leads directly to the endnotes. If you wish to view the Trigger Warning, please click that link first before reading on.

*** EDDIE *** 

FIVE MONTHS AGO. 

Eddie hated heights. And now he was falling. 

Falling. 

Falling. 

The black sky was painted by a blinding red-hot inferno, and an equally deafening blast. Still, he heard the last words of that damned parasitic alien as their parachute-shield form disintegrated in the blaze. 

**“Goodbye, Eddie.”**

The finality of those words was accompanied by the painful slap of water across his back, followed by the experience of drowning. 

_Still better than falling_. 

Somehow he made it to the surface, gasping for air. The shoreline was a ways away, so he started paddling. He was an okay swimmer. 

_I got this. Can’t die now, after all that._

When he finally reached the shore, every muscle was aching, and he had some burns on his skin. He just collapsed on the cold, wet sand, coughing up salty water. Oblivion soon fell. 

* 

He awoke in bed. Not his. He squinted his eyes to look, but it was too bright. He tried to move his arms, but only tugged on the IV jabbed into his vein. The room smelled of sterility. 

“He’s awake!”, a woman ran out of the room, “Dr. Lewis!” 

_Ah, hospital._

A moment later, the woman, who Eddie could now see was a nurse, re-entered with Dan, in his white coat. His exe’s boyfriend was not really the person he wanted to see right now. 

“Thanks Christina, that’ll be all”, the doctor said. 

The nurse left the room. 

“Glad to see you awake, Eddie”, Dan beamed. 

“How did I… end up here?” 

“Anne found you passed out on the beach. What were you doing there?” 

“Annie? Where is she?” 

“She has work now. Eddie, you’ve been in a coma for almost two days.” 

“Shit. Really?” 

Eddie tried to get up, but is wracked by pain. Dan put a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

“Yes. And you have some serious third-degree burns. You should stay for a while. What were you doing on the beach? You had hypothermia.” 

“Heh, long story-” 

Then Eddie remembered. 

_Venom._

“Venom, is he-?” 

“You mean the parasite? It could not be detected in your system. The parasite is gone.” 

“He hates being called- Wait, are you sure?” 

“Yes, did a full check up, except the MRI, just in case. Needed to make sure that on top of the burns and hypothermia, that you didn’t also have an alien eating you from the inside-out.” 

“Can I- Can I be alone for a minute?” 

“Certainly.”

Dan left, closing the door behind him. 

He gripped at the gown near his chest. Part of his arm’s tattoo sleeve was unrecognizably scorched. 

“Venom, are you still there?” 

No reply. 

“Venom? No way that killed you. We were fuckin’ invincible. You can’t be killed like that!” 

Still no reply. 

“Goddamnit, Venom! You can’t just crash into my life like that, turn my whole fuckin’ world upside-down in a day, and then just leave!” 

The silence hurt more than the physical pain. 

“That’s not- that’s not allowed! Who does that?” 

There was pain in his chest. Whether that was a sign of his symbiote or whether it was from being impaled by a giant sword by Riot, he wasn’t sure. 

Right. Venom had saved his life then. And again with the rocket explosion. Of course, that wasn’t even counting the number of times he saved him from Treece and his thugs. 

“You… saved me. You sacrificed your life for me, for the planet.” 

_Sacrificed? Have I already accepted that he’s dead? No. No. Not yet._

“Say something, please…” 

And after an insufferable pause… 

“SAY SOMETHING, YOU DAMN PARASITE!” 

A moment later, the nurse re-entered the room. 

“Did you call for help? Do you need anything?” 

Eddie slumped back, defeated. 

“No. You can’t give me… what I need.” 

* 

Eddie fidgeted with his coffee in the coffeeshop. Some of the patrons cast him sideways glances, but when he snarled, “What?!”, they quickly looked away. Yeah, the burns were pretty bad. 

A couple off to one table were both sipping straws from a huge frappuccino, giggling and staring each other in the eyes. 

_Jesus, get a room._

Coming back from the front counter, Anne Weying pulled out the chair opposite him, and sat down. She set on the table her coffee and chocolate chip cookie. 

“Eddie, you look better”, she wore the warmest smile, complementing her blanched-blond hair, and emerald green eyes. 

“Ha, ha. You know people have been looking at me funny.” 

“No, I’m serious, the burns were really bad when I found you.” 

Eddie sighed, running his hand along his face, feeling the uneven texturing. He was really out of it. He took a sip of his coffee, hoping it would ground him. 

“We’re going to make them pay for what they did to you. I’ve already started drafting the case against the Life Foundation. Funny thing, I’ll be battling in court against my old firm. Payback is a _bitch_.” 

“Yeah”, Eddie said, barely listening. 

Frowning, she put her hand on top of his, which caused him to flinch. 

“Eddie.” 

“He’s gone”, he lamented. 

He’d started absently rubbing her hand. Her skin was so smooth, just like the rest of her. 

_Just like ‘the rest of her’? God, what am I thinking?_

“I’m sorry for your loss.” 

“I’ll get over it. I always bounce back.” 

After a few moments of silence, she reflected, “When it was… bonded? with me… I could tell that it was fond of you.” 

“‘He’, Annie.” 

“Sorry. Yes, Venom. _He_ kept thinking about getting back to you. Really, it was all he thought about. Just, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, over and over. You know, I _really_ didn’t need to keep hearing your name, since we’re not-” 

“I love you”, he blurted, then just as quickly added, “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. It kind of just slipped out.” 

_Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

“Oh, Eddie”, she said with a frowning smile. 

She brushed her hand over his messy brown hair and left it there for a moment. 

“I love you too, Eddie. I always will.” 

“But you have Dan now.” 

“Yes”, was all she said.

Eddie had always been the one to wear his heart on his sleeve in any relationship. When they had broken up, engagement ring returned to him, he was left devastated for six months, whereas Anne had moved on pretty quickly and found herself a perfect match. He couldn’t even be jealous, Dan Lewis was a nice guy. He was way nicer to Eddie than was expected of him. He should be happy for them, them and their perfect union. He wanted Anne to be happy, and he knew that she could never be happy with him. 

He tried to lighten the mood. 

“So what was that kiss about?”, he inquired smirking. 

He remembered back in the forest when her symbiote-laced feminine figure had pulled him into an alien kiss. 

“Venom’s idea”, she stated bluntly, “Said it was the fastest route to transfer back to you.” 

“Huh. Is that right?” 

Finally when Anne got up with her coffee, she said, “Okay, I need to head out. I’ll call you when I get the court dates. Take care of yourself, okay?” 

Eddie just nodded, not looking at her. 

“Hey”, she lifted his chin, “Look at me. Take care of yourself, for me, okay? If not for yourself.” 

Eddie gave her his signature toothy grin. 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

She smiled sadly, and then left. He watched her back until she was out of sight, and then noticed the chocolate-chip cookie still on the table. 

_Probably left it on purpose._

He ate it. 

_Pretty good. Venom would’ve liked it._

* 

It’s been almost a week since he’s left his apartment. Since he’s showered. Since he’s cooked a proper meal. 

He just lay on his bed staring at the ceiling fan, spinning around and around and around. It was dark in the apartment, he left the lights off, and the window blinds closed. 

He still didn’t have a job, and he felt no motivation to start looking. At least he could afford to though, what with the money coming in. Anne Weying really was the best lawyer on the West Coast. The Life Foundation very soon had declared bankruptcy. Carlton Drake’s legacy was thoroughly dead. 

_The scumbag._

The memory invaded his space once again. 

_Life Foundation. Right. Venom._

Earlier in the month, when hope’s candle was still burning, Eddie had attended Dora Skirth’s funeral. The Life Foundation had reported her as one of the many casualties of their sick experiments, although her body was allegedly disposed of and beyond recovery. It was difficult watching her family, especially her kids, not even being able to see their mother’s body. She was the one who brought him to Venom in the first place. 

He didn’t even know the symbiote for that long. A day? Two days, was it? It all happened so fast. They barely knew each other. So why couldn’t he get him out of his mind? 

He remembered again in the forest when he kissed… who did he kiss? Annie? Anne had told him that the kiss was Venom’s idea. 

_Why would the killer alien want to kiss me? Weird_. 

That moment stuck out to him most. Not him getting impaled through the heart, or nearly dying in an explosion, or the motorcycle chase… and the adrenaline… and the _raw power_. _Oh yeah_ , together, they were unstoppable. 

But no, it was the fucking kiss. 

When they rejoined in that forest, when they were ‘We’ again, he felt whole in a way that he never felt whole before. Like, somehow they slotted together so snugly and perfectly on a cellular level, that no pair of man-woman, man-man, woman-man, whatever, could ever hope to imitate. 

_You never realize what you have until you lose it._

He really had not known what he was missing, until Venom showed up, when he stopped being poor little ‘Me’, and they became ‘We’. He didn’t even think about Anne anymore, at least, not much. Even Anne had never made him feel the way Venom had. 

He rubbed his hands over his face, and breathed in deeply. 

_Huh. My face is wet. Am I crying? I’m crying over a goddamned alien parasite. What the hell?_

Something unbuckled within him, and the tears continued to flow. Soon, he was sobbing. He sobbed, and he sobbed, and he sobbed, with his whole body convulsing violently on the bed. And as he continued to sob, the springy mattress seemed to gently cradle him through it. 

* 

The bay below was as dark and foreboding as the night sky. It had been a while since he left the apartment, but he left it today for this special occasion. 

He looked across from the Golden Gate Bridge to the San Francisco skyline. It glittered in the night. It was beautiful. He remembered when the damned parasite had said **“You’re world is not so ugly after all”**. Yes, Venom had betrayed his own species to save this world. Venom was the hero. Heck, if anyone was the parasite, it was him. 

That made him ruminate regretfully about how some of past relationships had ended. He’d always projected a caring mother figure onto them. Jamie Brock, his mother, had died giving birth to him, so there was always a lack that he expected other women to fill. 

Briefly, he remembered Sarah, a single mother in her late 30s, and the pleasant smell of her long brown hair. She sort of resembled his own mother from her photos. He’d been 17 at the time. However, none of the women had compared to Annie. 

_Annie. She probably would’ve tried to call me today._

He had ignored most of her calls. Anyway, he didn’t have his phone on him right now. Didn’t need it. 

A soothing breeze caressed his face. His scars had healed well, he could barely even notice them now. 

_Least I get to look good._

_Father, hope you’re proud of me._

Carl Brock had never been proud of him. No matter what Eddie did, he could not please the man. His father had given him the best education, sure, but though the man tried to move past it, he still couldn’t help but see his own son as the one who killed the love of his life. 

Off in the distance, the city lived and breathed even at this twilight hour. The world still turned on its own. 

Venom had said, **“It is peaceful up here”**. 

He remembered that vividly as if he was hearing it for real. 

_It is, isn’t it?_

Of course, the symbiote had said that while they were standing on top of his old company’s building. Hard to appreciate the beauty of the city with the gut-wrenching vertigo. Funny how Eddie had now decided to face one of his worst fears. 

He grabbed the railing, and jumped over. 

And he was falling. 

Falling. 

Falling. 

But not very far. 

_Must have caught on somethin-?_

He was just dangling there on the side of the bridge, murky water below. He looked up to see wrapped around the railing a black tentacle from his back. 

**We got you.**

*** 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: attempted suicide


	3. We Got You

*** VENOM *** 

**“Goodbye, Eddie”** , they heard their own voice. 

Venom saw Eddie falling. 

Falling. 

Falling. 

_Not again, please,_ Eddie begged. 

Below them, dark waters. Above, flaming sky. The amber sight made the symbiote shudder down to the molecular level. 

The deathly water rushed up to meet them, while the sky exploded in hellfire, and Eddie was about to be swallowed up in the middle, but then they rushed forward and enveloped him in a bubble of warm jet-black ink. 

**“We got you.”**

Behind closed eyelids, Eddie’s eyes shifted rapidly, but they suddenly sprang open, and then blinked away some wetness. 

“Was that last part a dream, or-?” 

Venom actually _had_ formed a bubble around Eddie’s body, soothing him from his night terror, black biomass, veined white, flowing over and under human skin. 

**“Yes and no. We can peer into your dreams. We can pull you out. Like we said: ‘We got you’”**

Their host gifted them his toothy grin. 

“You always do.” 

An image flashed in Eddie’s mind of when Venom first said that on the bridge. He had wept then, after they had pulled him back up. Their host also thought he was hallucinating. The symbiote had to explain that they’d been hibernating in Eddie’s body, regenerating their biomass, and healing his burn marks. Forming that life-saving tentacle took most of their strength, but once Eddie knew they were still alive, he resolved to help them get back to full health. And that meant they had to _hunt_. 

They extended a long tendril into the sun-lit kitchen, and brought back a giant mug that read: “World’s Greatest Reporter”. The rich smell that hit them was enough to jolt their host awake. His primate brain got high from that alone like a Pavlovian dog. 

**“We made coffee.”**

That earned a chuckle, “You spoil me, love… Aw, why this mug! I should throw it out.” 

**“Anne got it for you.”**

“That’s the thing! Shit, I didn’t set an alarm! Am I late?”, he jumped for his phone, nearly spilling his coffee. 

**“Of course not. You don’t have to leave for another hour.”**

“Ah, right. Keep forgetting I have an alien symbiote for an alarm clock. Thanks for all this, V.” 

**“For coffee?”**

“And waking me from the nightmare… and, just… for everything.” 

Venom was still cushioning their host as a beanbag, rippling over his tattooed flesh, massaging away the remaining fear-tension from the dream. 

Eddie moaned slightly, though whether it was from their gentle touch, from his first sip of the hot coffee, or both, they weren’t sure. 

Over the past few months, Eddie had gotten some of his tattoos redone, since many were ruined from the burns. Venom had healed all of the burns, so that the skin was now almost baby-smooth, but they had no idea how to repair tattoos. 

“Hey, V, this coffee ain’t half-bad. I appreciate this.” 

**“You’re welcome.”**

“You’re getting good at this, y’know?” 

**“Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like us to help with?”**

“Uhh…” 

Eddie must have noticed then that he was slightly aroused, because he got up quickly from the bed. Most of the biomass sunk back under skin, leaving just a head like a demon hell-hound on his right shoulder. What was missing was an angel on the other side. 

“I gotta get ready. Help me pick out some clothes?” 

**“We could be your clothes.”**

“Not _that_ again… I meant _real_ clothes.” 

**“We’ve been practicing while you’re asleep. Watch.”**

Their vibrating quantum super-strings interweaved lattices to mimic fabric, stretching across bare skin to form snug-fitting black jeans, black shirt, and black leather jacket. Eddie jumped at the feeling of being caressed everywhere at once. It caused his so-called ‘private’ organ to swell to half-mast. This physiological response did not happen with normal clothes. It was because it was Venom. 

Eddie cleared his throat and babbled, 

“Woah, buddy, oh, okay, that- that feels weird. Uhm… it’s hot. I mean, _warm_. You’re warm. That’s what I meant. And not in a good way. Well, not bad either… but I don’t- we shouldn’t-” 

Venom piloted the human in front of their full-length bedroom mirror, which they’d recently bought. After a moment of looking at himself, their host added, 

“Actually, y’know what, this looks pretty… _real_? Kinda comfy even...” 

He didn’t seem to mind his half-erection, as long as Venom pretended it wasn’t there. Eddie touched the pseudo-fabric of their biomass, and it rippled happily under his fingers. 

“Okay, you see, _that_ , that’s why this won’t work. Nuh-uh. Alright, now for _real_ clothes, like I said.” 

Venom vanished back under his skin, feeling dejected, but then protruded tendrils to pick out _real_ _clothes_ for Eddie: real t-shirt under real leather jacket, plus real jeans. 

After he was dressed in _real_ clothes, Eddie wandered to the kitchen fridge, pulling out frozen tater tots. 

“Ya hungry?” 

**“Always.”**

* 

Eddie ambled towards the open doorway of Jennifer Kao’s office, laced with the pungent chemical scent of acetone and thick smell of purple carpet. Sitting in her large office chair, she was applying lavender nail polish to her nails, matching her lavender suit. Her black hair was cropped short just above her pearl-adorned neck. 

Venom did not like the idea of submitting to anybody, but according to Eddie, this was his boss. He wrote conspiracy news pieces for the division aptly named ‘The Fact Channel’. 

Although Eddie wanted his old job back, Jack wouldn’t take him back, even _with_ the evidence he’d handed him damning Carlton Drake. The Globe had taken most of the credit for it, only barely mentioning his contribution. Venom figured it might have something to do with ending his note to Jack with “ASSHOLE”. Although Eddie was much better than Venom at dealing with the human social realm, he wasn’t always the most tactful. 

Their host shuffled annoyedly. He caught that. 

The wall behind Jennifer Kao was plastered with framed news articles, all Page 1’s, written by the woman, and her various certificates and awards. 

Eddie knocked on the doorframe. 

“Ahem- Ms. Kao…”, he alerted, as he entered the room. 

“Ah! Good to see you, Mr. Brock”, she greeted in an oriental accent heavier than Mrs. Chen’s, “I hope you have something worth publishing for me this time.” 

“As a matter of fact, I do! I’m looking into this sketchy biotech ‘ _medical_ ’ company, PsiOnyx. Y’know, ‘We Save Lives’ PsiOnyx? My hunch is they’re conducting unethical human testing, ironically, and have ties to the _Life Foundation_. This could be huge.” 

**Our hunch. We have a nose for Bad People** , they thought privately with their host, which of course, she couldn’t hear. 

Ms. Kao narrowed her eyes. 

“A hunch?” 

“It’s more than just a hunch… I have, like a sorta sixth sense, you feel me?”, he said tapping his finger on his temple. 

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. 

“I’ll send you what I have so far. It’s coming together. I’ll have more, you can count on me.” 

“Mr. Brock, please. Settle down. This kind of material is not quite what my division has been asked to report… You know the routine: giant alligators in the sewer, aliens walking among us, HIV vaccines being hidden from the public… that sorta thing.” 

“At least two of those things are true…”, he said, making a face. 

“See, that’s what I like to hear!”, she beamed, raising her fingers to inspect her handiwork. 

Venom supposed the purpose behind painting nails was similar to Eddie getting tattoos. He had called it ‘aesthetics’, and said it was a way of ‘expressing who you are’. For the symbiote, ‘who they were’ was simply the amalgamation of a million years worth of prior hosts, filtered through the perceptual lens of their current human host. Until they had met Eddie, the sum total of culture they had learned amounted to an eon of bloodshed and slaughter. Everything on Earth was new. 

They had zoned out from most of the boring conversation. Being in quantum superposition with both the inner and outer worlds, they could attend to more fascinating internal micro-events, such as the present skirmish in Eddie’s intestines between a militia of white blood cells and the invading forces of foreign pathogens. Although the symbiote could join the fray, easily committing bacterial genocide, they learned from research that the immune system grew weakened from over-sanitization, so they just watched. There were micro-micro-events even subtler still at the molecular level, where chemical fusion occurred, though none were faster than the symbiote’s own quantum vibrato, not by a long shot. 

They say ‘beauty’ is only skin-deep. Nonsense. The harmony of every organ system working together within their host’s body was as much an engineering miracle, as it was a work of art. There was the music of the whish-ing and whirring winds of the respiratory system. There was the heart drumming its steady beat, going BA-BUM-BA-BUM-BA-BUM. Their biomass swam with the red blood cells through an infinity of branching capillaries. They poured themselves into the fractal crevasses of their human’s biosphere; and of that wondrous world, there was no end. Every little part performed its function, coalescing into the whole that is Eddie Brock. 

Venom quantum-leapt back into the macro-context when they heard her say, 

“…or maybe? So, there seems to be some ruckus stirred up about some kind of a… Man-Eating Stalking Shadow? It’s a local cryptid. A cannibalistic serial killer demon of some sort. Whatever. With your penmanship, I bet you could whip up a very interesting story about it!” 

**Hahaha!** , boomed their demonic voice, **Oh, if only she** **_knew_** **.**

Their host’s eyes widened as he checked Kao’s face. His heart rate spiked momentarily. Then he relaxed when he noticed that she did not, in fact, hear that. 

“Uh… you don’t really believe in-” 

“What I believe doesn’t matter, Mr. Brock. What matters to me is maintaining our brand, to keep sales steady, so that our writers, like yourself, can earn real paychecks.” 

“ _Riiight_ … I mean, yes! Yes, ma’am.” 

“Remember, Mr. Brock, this is _The Fact Channel_. We must give our readers what they hunger for: The Truth.” 

“I- I’ll come back with something better.” 

“Please do, Mr. Brock. Your last article about Nazi mind-control programs was most excellent.” 

He muttered under his breath, “And nobody believes it…”, as he exited her office. 

He passed the skinny, suit-and-tie kid intern carrying in Jennifer Kao’s cafe latte. 

**Eat her?**

Eddie’s hand was tensed, so Venom formed a small gooey stress ball there. He squeezed it tightly, but not unkindly. 

* 

They had lunch in the cafeteria; the smell of coffee, pastries, soups, and unusually, peking duck, today’s special, filled the air. They sat in the empty corner away from the crowd. The clash of countless indecipherable conversations cannibalizing one another was irritating. 

Their host held their peking duck sandwich close to the jacket opening, where Venom sprouted as a fat leech with too many teeth taking small bites. 

**The steak wrap would’ve been better.**

Eddie was checking his phone, writing up an email to ask for an interview with Olivia Tyler, the CEO of PsiOnyx. 

**You are looking into them anyway?**

“If we get this down, Kao will have no choice but to accept our story. Will you help me out, V?” 

**If it means we get to eat bad guys.**

“Heh. There might be some of that, if there’s anything to my- _our_ ‘hunch’.” 

**Well, we** **_do_** **have a nose for-**

As if on cue, along came Pietro Packer, the new intern they saw earlier. Venom immediately hid themselves back under Eddie’s skin. 

**Speak of the devil. Bad news.**

Eddie directed a raised eyebrow at Venom. 

_You? Calling someone else a devil?_

Pietro looked _and_ sounded like a teenager, though he was actually in his early 20s. Although most of the staff here dressed in business casual, or less, Pietro donned a full fancy black suit and tie. He wore glasses, and had well-groomed golden blonde hair. His skin was pale white, and he was very skinny. His bones could easily snap like twigs. 

“Oh, uh, h-howdy, Ed- M-Mr. Brock”, he stuttered in his slight small-town Texan drawl, while wearing a nervous smile, “It’s n-nice to see ya in the office today! Golly, you’ve gained corn-fed! No offense, sir.” 

When humans were scared, they released pheromones that smelled of purple mist. Peculiarly, that smell was absent despite the detected mannerisms. 

“Pietro! Come have a seat! And I don’t even know what that meant, so… no offense taken.” 

Their host smilingly patted the bench beside him, and so Pietro sat, maintaining a distance. 

Eddie teased, “So how’s the Cow treatin’ you? Finally giving you some real work? I mean, beyond fetching her latte.” 

Pietro blushed, “I reckon! Actually, I’m fixin’ to write a piece! Ms. Kao asked me! For the- the newsletter!” 

His tone of voice and facial expressions matched the pattern called Excitement. This was genuine. 

“That’s great! Well, I suppose you can’t divulge what it is-” 

“The St-Stalking Shadow”, he blushed as if he sounded ridiculous saying it. 

A lump caught in Eddie’s throat. 

**Eat him?**

“NO! I mean, oh- oh, yeah?” 

“I reckon! She told me she wanted to give it to ya, but ya didn’t- uh, she said ya weren’t interested? So, I just wanted to let ya know that I’m- I’ll be taking it. That piece. I mean, unless ya want it still, or…” 

“Uhhh… No, I- No, it’s fine. I’m happy that you are finally getting to contribute. Uhm… if you’ll excuse me, I gotta run.” 

“Bless your heart! Thank ya so much, Mr. Brock!” 

Pietro leapt up and disappeared around a corner, before Eddie could even stand up. 

**Don’t like him. Bag of skin and bones. Smells like trouble.**

“He’s just some fanboy of my old show. I mean, I _was_ a bit of a celebrity for a stint. That didn’t last. Ah well. Let’s go home.” 

**You are home, Eddie.**

* 

“Oh god, there must have been something in that peking duck we ate”, Eddie hissed over the slushing and farting sounds of diarrhea. 

The hard porcelain tiles felt cool against their bare feet. The dirty-brown rank odor was suffusing their apartment bathroom. Perched and attached to the shoulder, their night-black pterodactyl head looked up, tasting the rancid air as it was vacuumed up into the ceiling vent. 

“I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen anymore, with you around?” 

**“The flora in your gut microbiome is a very delicately balanced ecosystem, Eddie. There could be unintended long-term consequences of altering it.”**

“Oh, bullshit! What about that time we accidentally ate that cake that was molding on the inside? And we were _fine_.” 

**“Bullshit, indeed.”**

The extinct reptilian bird squawked mockingly. 

“You asshole! You gave me the runs on purpose!” 

**“Speaking of assholes… We did not. That sandwich did. You chose to eat it. We wanted the steak wrap.”**

“So it was revenge? Well, I hope you’re happy with yourself.” 

**“Yes, we are. But now we’re getting bored. We will miss Hell’s Kitchen.”**

They shifted their internal biomass around in Eddie’s bowel region, and he shrieked. 

“Hey, V, what are you-!” 

**“Eddie. You are constipated. We can help correct-”**

“No no no no… you’re not going anywhere near my ass! Just… can I shit in peace? Diarreah is bad enough as it is without being watched. It’s really awkward.” 

**“Eddie. It is only awkward if you make it awkward. There is nothing to be ashamed of. Let us help.”**

“V, please take ‘No’ for an answer. Just this once.” 

**“As you wish, Eddie. Enjoy spending another twenty minutes on the loo.”**

“Wait, where’d you get twenty minutes from?” 

**“We have observed your excretory system in great detail over the past few months. Given the current state of your bowels, left alone, our estimate is about twenty minutes, give or take two minutes.”**

“Shit…” 

**“Exactly.”**

“Ha, ha. Soo… you’re saying you can-?” 

As if that was permission, Venom loosened their host’s bowel muscles and a sudden explosion blasted out of his rectum, decorating the interior of the bowl with dark brown specks and sludge, its consistency a low viscosity. 

“Ow. Oww! Oh my god, V. What the hell’d you go and do that for? This is fuckin’ gross.” 

**“You’re welcome. Now let’s go watch Hell’s Kitchen.”**

Instead, Eddie insisted that he absolutely had to take a shower after that. That was an even better idea, so they did. 

The human stripped off his t-shirt and boxers, kicking them aside, and got in the shower, a ceaseless spattering of steamy rain. 

Venom enjoyed showering with Eddie. They got to touch Eddie and help him wash. 

Their host must have caught their thoughts, asking, “Can you shampoo my hair, V?” 

**“We got you.”**

Their host blushed, or perhaps that was just the heat. 

With two tendrils, they squirted a glob of shampoo from the bottle, chocolate scented, and lathered it into Eddie’s short brown hair. It smelled nice. 

Showers also provided the curious alien a chance to observe the peculiar human reproductive system in action. 

**Ah… arousal** , they thought to themselves. 

Eddie must have caught that thought too, because more blood rushed to his cheeks, and also to his enlarging member. 

Since they’d reunited, their host had avoided all sexual activity, including that of the ‘solo’ format. Venom knew about sex from their human’s memories, particularly the ones with Anne, being the freshest, and also the most emotionally charged. 

Eddie had warned them not to poke around in his memories, but he often thought about Anne, and particularly, sex with Anne, and Venom couldn’t help but feel their host’s love and his lust for her, and the many memories and imaginings that accompanied those feelings. 

When Venom had asked why Eddie did not try to reacquire her as a mate, he always answered something like “She’s with Dan now”, or “I wouldn’t make her happy”. Since it made their host unhappy to think those thoughts, Venom did not pry further, because they wanted their host to be happy. 

Right now, there was an image in Eddie’s mind: it was Venom’s tentacles holding his limbs against the wall, completely powerless to stop them from- 

Eddie shook his head, and the physical gesture forcefully dispelled the intruding image from his mindspace. 

He said nothing. Venom said nothing either. 

A moment later, like clockwork, the same image looped back around on the same neural pathway. The testosterone from the testicles ignited into the electrostatic of arousal. The penis was nearly at full expansion. Eddie groaned in frustration. 

They both continued to say nothing. 

Their host reached out and turned the shower to a cold, icy blast, which cooled down the whole system. It had the intended effect: the arousal state declined, and blood rushed out of the lower member. 

A pity. It was educational while it lasted. Field experience always provided better learning than books. 

Later, after he dried and dressed, they caught the last fifteen minutes of Hell’s Kitchen. Venom liked watching shows about food. They made them- 

“Hungry, V?” 

**“Always.”**

*** 


	4. Black Roses

*** EDDIE *** 

Eddie kicked at the pebbles on the pavement as he waited outside the door leading up to Anne’s apartment. He was holding a rather expensive bottle of white wine, Anne’s favorite, and a bouquet of black roses. He wore a plaid dress shirt, with black dress pants, and dark brown dress shoes. He wasn’t quite sure if he was over or under dressed for this. 

There was a slight mist as he breathed out, but he didn’t feel cold. Come to think of it, he hadn’t felt cold for a long time now. He could take cold showers like a boss, without wincing. His dry, silky blob of an alien was always surprisingly warm. 

He did a double-take at the curb to check if he’d properly locked his motorcycle, The Venomizer. He’d bought a new one with the Life Foundation money, since his old one got trashed during the scuffle with Drake’s thugs. 

**She’s here** , his other alerted. 

The door opened. Anne stepped out, stunning as ever in her green-satin dress, which complemented her emerald eyes, and light blonde hair. Eddie could vaguely pick up the scent of her sweet flowery perfume. He never used to notice when people wore perfume or cologne before Venom. 

“Eddie! Oh you didn’t need to bring anything…” 

She hugged him briefly, but he couldn’t hug her back, unfortunately, because his hands were full. It was too short. 

He gave her his toothy grin, “Well, I didn’t need to, but, you know me, I kinda had to…” 

“Well, thank you. It’s very considerate of you. Here, let me help carry the wine for you.” 

She took the wine off him, but eyed the black roses suspiciously. 

“Oh these are for, uhm, you… and Dan.” 

“Uh huh…”, she replied slowly. 

With his free hand, he rubbed the back of his neck, and followed her up the stairs. 

**Maybe she hates them.**

“Maybe…”, he muttered to himself. 

Venom had asked once, **“What is the function of perfume and cologne?”**

Eddie had answered, “It smells nice, I guess? It affects how others see you. And you wear it if you want to impress someone you like.” 

He never bothered with any of that stuff though, not even deodorant, since he never noticed his own body odor anyway. It was too much hassle. Besides, wasn’t it attractive to girls to have a musky, and masculine smell? Even when he worked up a sweat at the gym, he just followed it up with a shower, so there was never really any need. 

He also wasn’t sure if his bodymate produced a smell, though perhaps Venom’s scent was undetectable to him in the same way his own was. He’d have to test that out later. 

There was a rumbling in his chest, like his other was doing gleeful cartwheels from that thought. He was so silly, like a little kid, at least when he wasn’t feasting on human flesh. Eddie rubbed his sternum with his fist clockwise, where he felt the bulk of the weight of his other, and the weight began churning clockwise too. 

When he stepped inside her apartment, he was hit with a wave of nostalgia. The living room was almost twice the size of his. It smelled like Anne, but with a bit more… Dan, maybe? There was a waft of a familiar meaty smell emanating from the kitchen. 

**It smells like home. Anne was a temporary home for us, and for you.**

“Yeah…”, he whispered longingly. 

“Dan’s just preparing the roast. Would you like anything to drink?” Anne asked him. 

“Hmm…” 

Now that his hands were free, he wanted to ask Anne for another proper hug. Was he _that_ touch-starved? He decided against it though, because it would be awkward. 

**Ask her for a hug, Eddie. You’ve both shared far more.**

“Shh!” 

“What?”, Anne blinked, confused. 

“Sssshake- milkshake?”, he tried to play off. 

“I’m afraid we don’t have that”, she smirked, giving him a funny look. 

“Water. Just- I’ll have a water. Thank you.” 

She left to fetch his water. 

He took a seat on one of the two couches, briefly looking out the set of windows onto the street below at his motorcycle, before turning his head to eye the old record player in front of a collage wall of framed art pieces. Noticeably, there was a hand-drawn rendering of the human anatomy he’d not seen before. 

He rubbed the familiar leather of the couch. The two closed doors leading to the bedroom was just behind. He recalled the times they couldn’t even be bothered to make it that far, and how the leather had gotten all sweaty from his back. Fuck, he missed that feeling. 

**It’s just a hug. You want one, Eddie. Really badly.**

“Please stop, V.” 

**Please grow some balls.**

Eddie rubbed his hands over his face. This was going to be a long evening. 

He could hear the couple giggling in the other room, chatting. The perfect couple. Anne and Dan. Dan and Anne. 

_God, their names even rhyme._

Then he noticed the grumpy cat glaring at them on the coffee table in front. Finally, someone he could relate to. 

“Oh, Mr. Belvedere, didn’t see you there, buddy!” 

He reached out to pet him, but the cat jumped away, hissing, which was his usual response. 

_So much for that._

**Edible?**

“No-o! Mr. Belvedere is strictly off-limits. _Strictly!_ You cannot eat Annie’s cat, or anyone else’s cat, for that matter!” 

**Not even Bad People’s cats?**

“Correct. Not even bad people’s cats.” 

**What about Bad Cats?**

“No. There are NO bad cats.” 

**Heheheh. We were just kidding.**

“Hope so.” 

He felt a poke in the ribs from the inside, which tickled in a strange way. 

Anne returned with his glass of water. 

“Hey Anne, do you think I could have a- like we could do a proper hu-” 

Then Dan, _of course_ , Dan, at that exact moment, enters the room. He had an argyle sweater over white dress shirt, black dress pants, and black socks. 

“Eddie! You made it! It’s so good for us to finally have dinner together, just us three.” 

Three. It was the correct number, for now. 

Eddie stood to greet him with a handshake, “Yeah, thanks for inviting me over.” 

The boyfriend beamed, “It’s our pleasure to have you. I’ve heard from Anne you have quite the appetite!” 

**Heheh. He has** **_no_** **idea. Hope he cooked enough for-**

Eddie coughed, “Yeah, we’re starving- uhm, _I’m_ starving. Anne said you were making roast?” 

Dan smiled, “I wanted to try peking duck. I really loved it when we had it in Chinatown.” 

Eddie made a face. 

_Great._

“Oh, is that not your style?”, Dan looked dispirited. 

“It is! It’s just, I had it earlier this week… but it was good! I wouldn’t mind having it again!”, he lied. 

**AHAHAHA!** , the annoying alien thundered in his eardrum. 

He made a face, intended for his secret bodymate. 

Anne silently looked back and forth between Dan and Eddie, between her lover and her ex-lover, amused with herself. 

“Oh yeah, this is for you”, Eddie said, handing the bouquet of black roses to Dan. 

Then blushing, he quickly corrected, “… _and_ Anne. For both of you.” 

“Oh wow, how did you know black was my favorite color?” 

Now Anne was surprised. 

“Really? _Black_ is your favorite color? Who has _black_ as a favorite color?” 

**Hey! Rude.**

Dan shined her a secret smile, “I’ll tell you about it later, honey. So! Dinner is ready. Let’s make our way to the dining room.” 

In the dining room, Eddie sat down at the table, as Dan walked off to the kitchen to grab food, and Anne arranged plates and utensils. The chair creaked slightly under his heavy weight, almost threatening to collapse. 

He was putting on major pounds from all the food they ate, though with the gym, most of it was muscle. In fact, they already had a full meal before coming here to take the edge off their ever-present gnawing hunger, so that they could eat slowly, and at least respect basic table manners. 

_So… those two been together this long, and still don’t know each other’s favorite color? Weird. I knew that Anne’s was green within the first few days of dating her. I just asked. Or maybe if I was a hotshot surgeon, I’d find more interesting things to talk about?_

Venom must’ve caught some of what he thought, because he asked, **What’s your favorite color, Eddie?**

It was blue when he was little, then it switched to red, and then to green when he met Annie, but now it’s… he directed the image at Venom: a night sky, dark, infinite in its expanse, and totally Black, Black, **Black**. 

Venom formed a layer under Eddie’s plaid shirt and gently squeezed in a hug. Eddie almost jumped out of his chair, startling Anne. 

“Are you okay, Eddie? You seem a bit off”, she asked, concerned. 

Then he smiled, placing his hand on his stomach, rubbing in a circular motion, and it seemed to spin likewise. Affection flooded him from the bond they shared, and he reflected it back in full at his other. 

“Yeah, I’m actually… _really_ good.” 

_Well, I guess I got a hug, after all. Thanks, pal._

**You’re welcome.**

Dan came back carrying appetizers. 

“Who wants bruschetta and canapés?” 

**Food!** , his symbiote-laced stomach sang with ravenous glee. 

* 

After gorging themselves on the main course, more peking duck, too much peking duck, and lemon meringue pie for dessert, they moved to the living room to wind down and chat. Anne put on a record on her player. It was a slow, but uplifting song. 

Dan poured Eddie’s bottle of white wine into two glasses, with Eddie himself refusing because he didn’t drink alcohol anymore. Venom was very protective of his liver. Eddie had noticed that, in general, Venom enjoyed stimulant substances, like coffee, more than depressants. 

**Still hungry. Hunt later?**

_You’re insatiable, y’know that?_

He rubbed his sternum where he felt most of his bodymate’s weight nestle, and the fuzzy, warm buzz returned. He often just summoned that feeling when his mood was low, like putting on uplifting music, and it usually worked to cheer him up. He didn’t feel as tired these days. 

The couple sat on the opposite couch from him, Dan with his arm over her shoulder, she sipping from her wine glass. 

“Didn’t know you were such a chef, Dan.” 

“I’m just good at cutting into meat”, the surgeon chuckled. 

**We like him.**

“So, Eddie, you do seem much happier these days”, Anne commented. 

She leaned closer, and she beamed like her sunshine hair, “You’re seeing someone aren’t you? I can tell…” 

“Not exactly… but sorta?” 

“Oh my god! I am _soo_ happy for you, Eddie!”, she cheered, putting her free hand on her cheek, “This is great!” 

Her enthusiasm stung a little. Dan just smiled politely, not wanting to pry. 

**Moment of truth, Eddie. Remember: balls.**

_Really didn’t need that image, V._

Anne and Dan both looked expectantly at Eddie. He gulped. 

Standing up from the couch, he walked over to the stand where Dan had placed his black roses into a black porcelain vase. 

“So you know these roses… and how they’re black?”, Eddie began, “Well, you see, black is my favorite color too…” 

Dan just blushed, and snuck a quick peek at Anne, before turning back. Anne just raised an eyebrow at Eddie, wondering where he was going with this. 

“And y’know what else’s black? D'you guys remember, months ago, there was that alien parasite?” 

_Oops._

Suddenly, black ooze burst forth from his chest like an alien birth, and Venom manifested like a resurfacing Eldritch abomination, bulked with rippling black muscles, veined white. Tentacles and fangs sprouted from random places, vaguely resembling a triple pitbull-headed, deformed Cerberus. The middle, most coherent head, drooled from a slithering tongue that sliced the air. Eddie’s ass fell back on the floor from the sudden dramatic upward shift in weight. 

Anne screamed. Dan reflexively stood, stepping in front of her, arms wide in a gesture of ‘come no further’. But he looked scared. 

**“Parasite?! PARASITE?!?”** , his deep, booming voice seemed to shake the whole apartment. 

“Holy shit”, Anne exclaimed, “You’re… alive! Venom!” 

Eddie yelled, “Venom! Stop! I am so sorry, guys! I was gonna tell you guys, but not like this! We’re not dangerous! I swear!” 

**“Oh, but we** _**are**._ **”**

The abomination gathered and cohered into just the above-waist portion of their full-humanoid form, protruding from Eddie’s chest, pinning him down to the wooden floor. He gulped. He had been so used to seeing Venom’s small little animal forms, that he had forgotten how terrifying he truly was. 

“Venom. I’m sorry. It slipped. I didn’t mean to- to call you that. Please forgive me?” 

Eddie was sincere, and he knew Venom could feel it across their bond. 

His symbiote grumbled like rolling thunder. 

Mr. Belvedere on the window sill just stared at them with the same bored expression. They were all in a Mexican standoff, waiting to see what happened next. 

It was Dan that fired first. 

“You want anything to drink, Venom?” 

Everyone looked at him like _he_ was the alien. Then... 

**“Chocolate milk.”**

“Well, we have regular milk, and some, uhh- chocolate icing? I don’t know if that would even taste-” 

**“That would be good.”**

“Right. One chocolate milk, coming up.” 

Dan left to the kitchen in a speed walk. 

Eddie got up from the floor, and Venom correspondingly reduced in size to above the chest, adjusting their position to now protrude from his shoulder and upper back. It tingled and prickled strangely where he was attached, and the alien seemed to have no trouble phasing straight through the fabric of his plaid dress shirt. He made his way back to sit on the other couch again, with Anne eyeing them warily. 

Then, she started giggling loudly. 

“God bless that man. Always keeps his cool.” 

“I guess you’d have to be pretty calm to be a surgeon? Steady hands and all…” 

“You bet. He has _very_ steady hands”. 

She covered her mouth, embarrassed at what she just let slip. 

“Oh, uhh-”, he replied. 

_What can I say to that?_

He looked up to meet his other’s crescent eyes. Venom cocked his fanged head at him. The alien hadn’t seemed to pick up on the subtleties of their conversation. 

Dan returned with the ‘chocolate milk’, and his hands did not shake as he handed it off to Venom’s huge taloned hands. The glass was puny in those hands, and Venom downed it like a shot. 

Eddie’s own nerves seemed to extend further into the veined alien goo. He could vaguely taste the chocolate flavor replicated on his own taste buds, and he felt a wave of liquid coldness trickle from Venom’s mouth down to his own back, and then merging into his human flesh. The sensation continued flowing towards, and then connecting with his spinal cord. He shuddered from the alien chill. 

**“Tasty.”**

“I’m glad you like it”, Dan said, taking the glass from him. 

He headed back towards the kitchen, and said, “I’ll get you another one.” 

Eddie was glad Dan was there to defuse the situation. He didn’t truly believe that Venom would ever hurt him, or his friends, but he had the decency to at least look scared when his other was genuinely angry, which usually only occurred with the ‘P’ word, or when someone threatened Eddie directly. Although Venom was a killer, he was less the fiery, raging kind, and more the cold, calculating kind. 

Anne questioned, “So… how long have you-”

“Just over four months… and before you ask, I really thought he was gone after the rocket. He… _showed up_ almost a month later.” 

“ _Showed up?_ ” 

Venom gave Eddie a curious glance, opalescent eyes narrowing to sharp crescents. 

_I don’t want to tell her about… the incident, when you showed up, okay, V?_

“He was… too weak to contact me before then. When he healed enough, he let me know he was there.” 

Anne didn’t quite believe him. She was a lawyer, and she knew Eddie. 

Dan returned with another glass of ‘chocolate milk’, which Venom once again took in a single swig. This time, Dan took the glass and set it on the coffee table, before taking a seat beside Anne again, rubbing her back. She combed her fingers down her blondie-locks, letting her palm fall on his thigh. 

“Come to think of it, Eddie, there was a time when you wouldn’t even pick up your phone”, she said, “And then suddenly I hear that you found yourself a job! I knew _something_ had changed. I thought you’d gotten into a new relationship. I’d never suspected that it was- you know… _Venom is alive_! I guess that means you two are getting along?” 

Venom had gradually shrunken down to a balloon-shaped head on Eddie’s shoulder, and was rubbing against his face like a cat. Eddie smiled, and head-butted him back. See? Harmless. 

“Yeah, Venom, he’s… good for me. Really good. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without him. Maybe…”

_Nowhere._

He didn’t finish that sentence out loud. 

**“And it** **_is_** **a relationship”** , the slimy balloon with fangs insisted. 

“I don’t think that means what you think it means, V.” 

**“We are yours, Eddie, and you are mine. Forever. It is a perfect marriage.”**

Anne almost choked on her wine. Dan just chuckled mildly. 

“Ahem- he means ‘symbiosis’… like a mutually beneficial partnership.” 

**“Symbiosis. We don’t think** **_you_** **quite know what that means, Eddie. It is a total union of body and mind, down to the molecular level, and even deeper. We are a perfect match in every way, but there’s still a long way to go until we reach perfect symbiosis. You still hold back certain parts of yourself, out of shame, such as-”**

“Aaaand, that’s enough, V. This is not an intervention.” 

Anne laughed, “Oooh! An intervention for Eddie! Great idea. That’s happening. Let’s make this happen, guys.” 

**“We had not even thought of that. It may be useful for reaching the true potential of our symbiosis.”**

Eddie buried his face in his hands. That was _not_ happening. 

“Great, can I be arbitrator?”, Dan joked. 

“Not you too! Three against one, not fair.” 

He slouched against the couch rest, hanging his head back. 

Dan consoled, “Well, Eddie, I’m glad you trusted us enough to tell us this.” 

Anne interjected, “Speak for yourself, doc. I’m _pissed_. You lied to me this whole time, Eddie.” 

“Sorry. I didn’t know how you’d react to V. Err… to Venom, given what happened the first time.” 

The doctor spoke up, “Eddie, if you would like, I could run some tests to make sure that you’re… that _both of you_ are at your optimal health. Especially since, last time you two were together-” 

**“No tests! Never again!”**

“V doesn’t like being tested. He had a bad time at the Life Foundation.” 

**“A ‘bad time’ is an understatement.”**

_I hear ya, buddy. And I’m not too keen on being inspected by my exe’s boyfriend. He’s nice and all that, I mean, way nicer to me than he needs to be. But… it’s just a bit awkward._

The doctor reassured, “I understand. I’d promise that none of the tests would be invasive… no MRIs, and I think it might help your alien pa-… uh…?” 

“Symbiote”, Eddie assisted. 

“Sure, _symbiote_ to better understand your human physiology, and synchronize better. Achieve a better symbiosis, let’s put it that way!” 

**“Oh?”**

“You’re not actually considering this are you, V?” 

**“Will you teach us about the human anatomy, doctor?”**

“I’d be absolutely _delighted_ to teach an alien… _symbiote_ , about how the human body works.” 

**“Then it’s a deal. Though we only care about how** **_Eddie’s_** **body works.”**

That earned a smirk from Anne. 

“Perfect. Come around to the hospital next Tuesday in the early morning.” 

“Uh, guys, it’s still my body. I think I get a say in this.” 

“C’mon Eddie, you’ve always liked giving up control”, teased Anne, but she covered her mouth shyly when Dan gave her an amused raised eyebrow. 

She waved her hand, “Okay, I think I’ve drank too much of your wine. Everyone, please ignore me for the rest of the night.” 

**“Likes to give up control? Is that so?”** , Venom eyed Eddie questioningly. 

Eddie’s face was red. He tried to think of something to change the subject, but came up blank. Luckily, Anne changed it for him. 

“Wait, now that I remember… you two aren’t still… eating- okay, oh my god, maybe I don’t want to know. Don’t answer.” 

Eddie didn’t. 

Venom did. 

**“We only eat Bad Guys. Their brains, especially seasoned with fear chemicals are scrumptious, delicio-”**

Eddie screamed, “Venom! What did I say about-! I mean, he’s joking, of course. We eat chocolate. Not brains. Just, lots of chocolate. We don’t need to eat-” 

Anne palmed her face, “Oh my god, Eddie. You can’t be serious. Maybe Venom is not the best influence on-” 

**“We are a perfect match”** , Venom interrupted, like it was indisputable. 

Dan seemed to be pondering intently, index finger on his lips. 

“Chocolate and brains, huh? D’you think you could write out a list of other foods Venom needs to eat? Maybe we could narrow down exactly which nutrients your... _symbiote_ depends on.” 

**“That can be arranged.”**

Anne looked to Dan with the fondest eyes, fonder than she’d ever looked at Eddie. It still kind of hurt, but not as much as it used to, considering that Eddie was now able to have dinner with his ex and her new partner. Besides, he had Venom now. 

His alien other sent a giddy, happy feeling through their bond, and their form correspondingly became smaller, more bulbous, cuter, and less terrifying. 

“Well, try not to get into _too_ much trouble, Eddie”, Anne said at last, “When you crash, you tend to crash hard, and it hurts me to see you like that. Take care of yourself?” 

“I will. For you, if not for myself.” 

She smiled at his words. 

“And for V, too. A-And Dan!”, he stuttered, “You all… I have people, like you guys, who care about me.” 

In his chest, he felt Venom radiating… what was that? 

Happiness? No, more than that. 

Fondness? More. 

Love? 

Love. 

Was that the right word? 

“So it matters that I take care of myself, for you guys, because you care.” 

Eddie blinked hard a few times. 

_Not about to cry, right now. Not here. No. Nope._

The couple both smiled, Anne while sipping more wine. 

Eddie was glad, relieved, in fact, that Anne, _and_ Dan, had both taken this so well. It had been beginning to feel a bit claustrophobic having nobody else who knew about Venom. He had felt like he was going a bit crazy, becoming too different from everyone else around him, avoiding seeing many of his old friends, or meeting new ones, because none of them would ever understand them. 

This was a breath of fresh air. Both Venom and him took in a deep breath in unison, and sighed deeply. 

* 

It was finally time for them to leave. They waved bye to Dan, and Anne walked them downstairs to just inside the front porch. 

“Thanks for inviting me… _us_ , over for dinner… the food was great, Dan’s a cool guy, it was really nice, and-” 

Then Anne leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. 

_Oh. Okay._

He blushed right where she’d kissed. 

And yes, then she gave him a long hug. Her perfume smelled nice, but not as nice as the familiar scent of her hair. It’s been a while. The feeling of wrapping his arms around her again felt like a release of a burden he’d been carrying. It was a long, satisfying hug, and now he could finally move on from that, towards his life. Anne was even okay with Venom wrapping tendrils around them both, bringing them closer, tighter, prolonging the hug. 

Yeah, it was a _really_ long hug. 

Even though the hug would eventually have to end, when one of them pulled away first, which of course would be Anne, Eddie savoured every second of it. 

*** 


	5. Dreamed Memories, Remembered Dreams

*** VENOM *** 

The wailing cries of an infant could be heard in the other room. Its piercing shrieks were irritating to the symbiote in their disembodied form. 

**Should we eat it?** , they pondered. 

Their attention was quickly pulled back to the main attraction in the center of the bedroom. 

Eddie was sucking on her breast. It was Anne. She was nude, and sitting on his lap. He was shirtless, but wearing sweatpants, which did nothing to hide his hardness. 

Except it wasn’t Anne, it was another woman with long, brown hair. Somehow Venom knew that she was a mother. Who’s mother? Eddie’s? The baby’s? 

Her name was Sarah. Eddie had no memories of his mother, so it was not likely her. Venom could taste what was flooding Eddie’s mouth as he hungrily and desperately sucked and sucked her hard nipple: human milk. 

**Humans can produce their own milk? Interesting.**

As Eddie engaged in instinctive mammalian breastfeeding behavior, his brain was being flooded with chemicals, among which was oxytocin, which Venom associated with the emotion of Love. He loved this woman named Sarah. 

Except it wasn’t Sarah, it was a silhouette of a female figure, wearing silky black symbiote, writhing in ecstasy. And of course, Eddie was still sucking and sucking on her dark breast, glowing with milky white veins. 

**That’s new. Not our doing.**

It was noticeable when the baby stopped crying. 

Suddenly, the bedroom door busted open, and several men in blue hazmat suits stormed in, holding strange black devices. A very short, dark-skinned woman followed. She wore a black suit, and had short, frizzy hair. 

The blue hazmats were emblazoned with a dark indigo brain insignia that Venom recognized as the logo for PsiOnyx. Olivia Tyler beckoned with a raised finger, 

“Nuke ‘em.” 

Their devices buzzed, and an ear-piercing shriek tore the room apart. The female-figured symbiote on the bed shouted a profanity and exploded. Eddie screamed in pain. Even Venom screamed. 

**Arrrgh! That sound from hell! That damned, awful sound!**

Reality ripped at the seams, and everything dissolved into nothingness. 

* 

They woke at the same time. Their human host immediately sat up, panting, and shouting, “Venom!” 

**“Just a dream, Eddie”** , they reassured, **“We had another orgasm.”**

Eddie looked down at his boxers, and noticed the large wet spot in front of his crotch. 

“Ah, fuck me! Not again!” 

Their host got up quickly, stripped off his boxers, hurried into the washroom, stepping under a warm shower. 

Venom had read about this peculiar physiological response. It was called a ‘nocturnal emission’. It happened when a human did not ejaculate for a long period, and the body needed to do it automatically, during sleep. This was the third time it’s happened since reunion. This was Venom’s third orgasm. 

Well, _human_ orgasm. The Klyntar had something which might loosely correspond to what humans called an orgasm during their spawning process, but no, it could not really be compared. 

Venom enjoyed the brew of chemicals produced by their primate brain after these episodes. The symbiote’s favorites were the rewarding dopamine, fuzzy oxytocin, and certainly serotonin, which made them feel very happy. 

From the side of his neck, they hung as a deep-sea anglerfish, sprouting an antenna whose dangling, bulbous end glowed a bioluminescent white. 

Their human’s thought-stream was racing like the onslaught of shower droplets. Venom could not quite make out what. 

They playfully flicked his cheek with their antenna. 

**“What’s wrong, Eddie?”**

“Huh? Oh, hey, V. Forgot you were there. Nothing’s wrong. You hungry, by any chance? Heh, of course you are.” 

Eddie often tried to use that question to deflect. And it often worked, because, yes: 

**“We are.”**

“We got most of the day to ourselves, I just gotta do an hour or two of more research so I’m better prepared for that interview, once they get back to me.” 

That brought Venom back to the dream, where Eddie was breastfeeding with Anne, with Sarah, and with _Them_. They didn’t quite remember how it ended though, only that it felt very intense, intensely awful, but then intensely _good_. But they had an instinct that they needed to warn Eddie of something, but weren’t sure what. 

**“Do you remember the dream, Eddie?”**

“Ah, I’d rather not.” 

**“We feel there was something important in there.”**

Heat rose to Eddie’s face, and also once more to his lower regions. 

“J- Just a dream, bud. They don’t mean anything. You don’t have to analyze every little thing to death, V.” 

Venom’s face literally pouted, annoyance flashing across their bond. 

“Aww, V. You know you’re really cute when you’re annoyed.” 

**“That is an insult! We are a deadly** **predator. Not. Cute.”**

The carnivorous apex predator disliked being called ‘cute’, almost as much as they disliked being called ‘parasite’. 

“Why not both? You’re a cute, fluffy killer alien.” 

**“We do not possess plumage or fur.”**

They got out of the shower, and Venom helped dry his back with the towel, but Eddie took over when they tried to do his front. Their annoyance was still evident. 

“Hey buddy, what’s up?” 

**“We are annoyed because you do not trust to us. We want to help you.”**

“Alright, alright. Help me get dressed then?” 

Eddie went to stand before his bedroom mirror, and inspect his own naked physique, which was very muscular and bulky. He often went to the gym, and the symbiote restitched his torn muscle fibers every time rendering his recovery period negligible. As their human physiology became stronger, so did they. 

“Ahem… we just gonna stare, or…?” 

**“You look strong and healthy. This makes us feel we are doing a good job.”**

“Y- Yeah, it’s- you’re doing a good job, V… I look like I’m on ‘roids, damn.” 

The symbiote helped cover their naked human form with the unnecessary textiles. Putting clothes on was more challenging than taking them off, and also less fun. This cultural convention seemed to be an artifact of a distinctly human trait that was not even shared by the other native species of this planet: Shame. 

Wandering into the kitchen, they breathed in the warm, morning sunlight streaming in through the windows, bathing the room in the new day. 

The shapeshifting shadow now lay on their human’s head like a black, flappy-eared gremlin, as he rummaged through the crowded fridge for eggs. Venom’s tentacles efficiently rearranged the gridlock to retrieve the carton hidden near the rear. 

“So I just wanted to say… you _do_ help me, V. In so many ways. There’s just some things I’d like to have some privacy with, alright buddy?” 

Their host heated a pan over the stove, and threw in a piece of butter. 

There’s that word again. Privacy. There was no point of reference whatsoever in the Klyntar perception of the world by which to make sense of that word. Symbiotes were continuous, flowing, without boundary. All that was touched, and felt, and smelt, and tasted was known, inseparable from the one touching, feeling, smelling, or tasting. The artifice of drawing lines in the mind-sand was an arbitrary fabrication. 

Two eggs dropped into the pan. Their egg whites merged together, while two orange yolks swam side by side in the middle. 

**“That is challenging for us. You will have to meet us in the middle.”**

“I’m trying, V. I really am. I’m going at the pace that I can. Bear with me. I’m still not used to this whole… always having someone watching over my shoulder thing.” 

**“We’ve been together for more than four months.”**

“ _Been together_ , huh? Well, even if you wanna put it like that, four months isn’t very long for a relationship. That takes time.” 

Two tentacles from the shoulder blades draped over the front of their host’s shoulders, tied at the sternum, like a scarf hugging from behind. They felt, reverberating back and forth across their bond, the unmistakeable, yet unspoken, feeling of mutual love. 

**“We would wait forever for you.”**

And so they waited some time for the eggs to finish. Sunny-side up. 

* 

The Cooking Channel was playing some re-runs. They were making vegan burgers again. 

**“Blegh. Why make fake meat?”**

On the shoulder, the obsidian gargoyle was fossilized in the quintessential hunched-back posture, arched over Eddie’s phone, firing off messages to Anne and Dan in their group chat, using a stylus pen since their matter did not register on the touchscreen. Two bat wings, which were just for show, sprouted from their curved back, torn with many holes. They’d written the list of foods they liked to Dan, which of course had brains at the top of the list, followed by dark chocolate as the second. After that, they played Candy Crush. 

The symbiote did not utilize ‘entertainment’ in the way most technologically-inclined humans tended to, as a way to distract themselves from their internal feelings, or external situation. Instead, this served as an outlet for the alien to channel their murderous desire. It was satisfying to pulverize the digital renditions of sugar-coated sweets, and they were very efficient at it. 

Venom couldn’t use the laptop because Eddie was on it, who was also in the quintessential hunched-back posture. Monkey see, monkey do. 

Although he’d promised to only spend an hour or two, it’s been almost four. Earlier, it had been sunny outside, but now it was gloomy and cloudy, so they had turned the lights on. 

At some point, they couldn’t even use the phone because Eddie needed to make a call to ‘an old friend’, Officer Harbinder Singh, who apparently was a cop soon to retire. They used to help one another out on cases back in the day. Harbinder had the advantage of being a cop, while Eddie had the advantage of not needing a warrant and just plain sneaking into places. Their host didn’t learn anything useful from the call though, so he essentially just wasted their time. Luckily, Candy Crush was still waiting for them when they got the device back. 

After some time, they poked Eddie’s hunched over shoulders with their pointed tail. 

Their host turned his head smilingly, and petted Venom’s grinning horned, gargoyle head. 

“What’s up, love? Bored?” 

**“You’ve been on the laptop for four hours.”**

“Wow, has it been that long? Time flies. I was getting lost in the details on this PsiOnyx case. Sorry.” 

PsiOnyx. The dream had something to do with that. Somehow, all the bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated data was being processed in parallel across trillion-synapses, lightning flickering across tasty brain wetware, coagulating to form a larger memeplex. Dream-processing accelerated this synaptogenesis, the birth of new synaptic circuits. 

“I can take a break, now. What d’you wanna do?” 

**“Hunt?”**

“We already went last night, _and_ last week. And don’t think I forgot the week before that just because I was half-asleep while you drove.” 

They’d been hunting more often, and the killing and the eating of human meat was bothering Eddie less and less. And their host was bothered by _that_. 

“How about sushi, instead?” 

**“That’ll do.”**

*

Eddie pulled out a dollar, and tossed it in the empty coffee cup sitting in front of the ragged man sleeping on the side of the curb. This act which benefitted another, but not oneself was called Altruism. It was the literal opposite of Parasitism. 

Further up the block, they reached the all-you-can-eat sushi place, and entered. They were greeted by the Japanese decor, the orange smell of cooled, fresh salmon, and a young, uniformed Japanese female. The venue was less than half full in the afternoon. The waitress guided them to a small table near the middle, but Eddie insisted on the plush rounded couch near the back corner, even though it was meant for six. 

Other than the bluetooth in his ear, he wore sunglasses, beret, scarf, windbreaker, jeans, and sneakers. 

**“You look ridiculous”** , the symbiote scolded before they had left the apartment. 

As far as ‘aesthetics’ went, this was considered a ‘crime against fashion’. 

“It’s a disguise, babe. We ate a fuck ton here last time. They’d kick us out if they recognized it was us again.” 

Eddie picked up the electronic tablet displaying a menu full of many different names for, essentially, fish. 

“See anything you want?” 

**Everything.**

They seized control of their human fingers and began tapping away on the screen, and their host resisted for a moment, but then allowed it to happen, although if Venom wanted to take full control against their host’s will, they could at any moment. They haven’t done that yet though because of yet another ambiguous human rule called ‘consent’. However, Anne had clued them in that, like with ‘the law’, even this had a loophole. She had said Eddie liked to give up control. 

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m ever gonna get used to that.” 

They started pressing plus one on every item, ten times each. 

“Woah! We gotta be discreet about this. Space it out, not all at once.” 

When their first massive dish full of sashimi and some hand-rolls arrived, the lady had the audacity to say to them, 

“Any unfinished food will be charged.” 

**Unfinished food? Not likely.**

Eddie chuckled, rubbing his hand over his Heart Cave, which vibrated as the ravenous alien purred in anticipation. 

Their host clumsily tried to handle the two wooden sticks to pick up a piece of sashimi, but the pesky dead fish kept slipping through their grasp. 

**Fuck the manners.**

They dropped the sticks, and using their bare hands, started just shovelling sashimi into their mouth, barely even chewing before swallowing. Raw food always tasted better than cooked food. Alive was also better than dead, but this was an adequate compromise. Slick biomass coated the esophagus tube to lubricate the uninterrupted passage of food. They also manifested baby piranhas swimming in their stomach acid to do the chewing downstream, alleviating the workload on their digestive tract. 

The mother at a nearby table of a family of four stared at them, agape mouth twisted in disgust. 

“People are watching us, V…”, he muttered under his breath. 

**You picked the ridiculous outfit.**

“No, V, the way we’re eating… they’re lookin’ at us all gross, like.” 

**Aww… shy, Eddie?**

“I’m not shy!”, their host pouted, a bit too loudly. 

They reached for a hand-roll with their bare hands, which, as the name would suggest, was proper etiquette. Stuffing the entire thing into one’s mouth in one go, however, was not. 

Venom sprouted from the navel like a black umbilical cord that ended in the head of a fanged Venus flytrap. Hidden by the table-cloth, Eddie dropped food down for them with one hand, while feeding himself with the other. Two mouths were better than one. 

Several rounds of food later, the staff looked like they were starting to get peeved with them, and were trying to hide it. However, their facial micro-gestures gave away their true mind-state. Eddie patted his stomach. 

“More?” 

**Oh, Eddie. We’re just getting started. Just wait ’til later when we get to dessert.**

“Haha, we’ll rob ‘em blind.” 

The words catalyzed brain activity along association webs, triggering the short-term memory bank. Eddie recalled the man he’d earlier tossed a dollar to. Then the thought-chain drilled deeper into long-term. 

“Hey, V. D'you remember Maria?” 

**We remember hosts we’ve had hundreds of thousands of years ago. Of course we remember Maria.**

“Did she… did she suffer?” 

**Both before and after we bonded.**

Eddie winced at that. 

**We’ve both been avoiding bringing her up. It was not a pleasant time for us, either of us, in that lab.**

“Yeah… I didn’t want to upset you by bringing it up. And I didn’t know how to ask this, but, I gotta know. Why did she have to die? I mean, when you switched to me.” 

**She was already dying. She had given up all hope.**

“But, you didn’t have to kill her, right? When you switched.” 

**We did. We were what was keeping her alive, even though she fought us most of the way through. Her immune system was very hostile to our… intrusion. It was dangerous for us to stay in there. You have exhibited the same evolutionary glitch in the survival program. She wanted to die.**

“She… wanted to die? Maria’s a fighter, she wouldn’t… Y’know what she’s been through? She’s stronger than me”, he said, with a hint of shame. 

As his voice rose in decibels above audible threshold, some of the staff and other patrons flashed their human sideways glances. Talking to oneself was another social taboo. 

The extra-terrestial visitor was beginning to understand where the memeplex called ‘Awkwardness-Shame’ lodged in Eddie’s mind originated, and how it was conditioned over a lifetime of obeying silly rules. The original author, or at least messenger, for most of these rules seemed to originate from a man whose name they’d seen in Eddie’s phone contacts list, although it hadn’t been contacted for over a decade. Carl Brock. Knowing how it was built, they could see how it could dissolve. 

**We could… show you.**

“Show me what?” 

**Our memories. Not all of them. Just the ones when we were bonded with Maria. Then you will know.**

“Right. I forgot that’s a thing. Uhh, but not here. Let’s go back home first.” 

**Before that, though: dessert.**

Together, they grinned devilishly. 

* 

Their human finally stripped off his ridiculous outfit, back in the apartment. They’d also unloaded some bagged groceries picked up on the way from Mrs. Chen’s. Some of the evening sunlight from outside bathed the living room’s brown sofa with an orange tinge. 

“You said Maria’s immune system hurt you. Does mine… hurt you?” 

**“We are a perfect match.”**

“Oh. Yeah. I guess you keep saying that, but maybe I don’t fully get it.” 

**“You will.”**

He rubbed the black mass of tentacles which cuddled his rib cage and chest, and they squeezed just a bit tighter. Venom had looked up the word to describe what they’d started doing more often: ‘cuddling’. 

“Maybe I should try a bit of that meditation CD Mrs. Chen gave me, first. Might help me to focus?” 

**“It might, but we doubt it’s necessary.”**

Eddie ended up doing both that, and taking a shower, because he wanted to feel ready. They’d tried this experiment once before, of radically opening up their bond in this way, but Eddie’s brain had been overwhelmed by the totally alien memories, and had no way to properly contextualize any of it. Now though, they were going to limit the scope to just Maria, who had human memories, so it should work. 

The bedroom was dim, unlit; quiet but for the fridge hum out in the kitchen. 

Eddie was lying down in bed in just his boxers, interlaced fingers resting over his navel, wearing a blindfold. Something about seeing Eddie like that triggered a hunger in Venom, and not the usual kind of hunger either. But now was not the time. 

The process was a bit like falling asleep, except Venom would keep Eddie’s consciousness awake, so he could remember. 

**“Ready, Eddie?”**

“Yeah, when you are. Give it to me, baby.” 

The thin membrane that separated their consciousnesses thinned and became permeable, their bond that tunnelled through expanded and then blew wide open, and suddenly, there was neither ‘Me’ nor ‘You’, only ‘Us’. 

* 

The female human host laid there, tear-stricken, huddled in the corner of the glass cell, awash with that nauseating neon-blue glow, and the blip of monitoring equipment. The residual yellow and red smells of urine and blood stained the stuffy atmosphere, drowned out in heavy-duty cleaning chemicals, bleach-white. 

Their third host was starving, and the symbiote was starving. The food the watchers brought did not have sufficient quantities of the chemicals they needed to thrive. And the host was fighting them, perhaps rightly so, both in mind and body. At the very least, they knew her name, though she hadn’t volunteered it. Maria Reuben. 

Her system was tied up in knots of tension carrying decades of pain, fear, sorrow, and regret. Her psyche was a fractured mosaic of trauma and nightmares. When they tried to connect and understand how it all had gotten this way, she had shrieked, 

“Get the fuck out of my head, you vile parasite. That Skirth bitch poisoned me with this venom. Venom! That’s what you are!” 

She spat. 

And now, they knew their name: **Venom**. 

They heard a blood-curdling scream out in the hallway. Another symbiote in Venom’s squad, along with their latest ex-host. The blue one. They rejected and devoured every host they were fed. This was their 27th. That was the typical Klyntar strategy, which their silvery leader had encouraged. Entire civilizations across the universe had been wiped out in their feeding frenzy. They were parasites. Destroying without regard for preservation, taking without offering anything in return. 

To Venom, that was a viable short-term strategy, but without attaining a proper symbiosis with a suitable host, it was a poor long-term strategy in this toxic oxygenated environment. Although Venom had been designated a loser for wishing to deviate from the Klyntar modus operandi of ‘devour and conquer’, they saw the potential of symbiosis, and knew that it was the optimal strategy, and the true evolutionary destiny of the Klyntar race. They resolved to keep their host alive, and learn as much about human physiology as possible. 

Maria was only Venom’s third. They’d needed to adapt and learn on-the-fly whilst managing the baser instincts of their gnawing hunger, their eternal curse. Since the provided food was inadequate, they had no choice but to feed on the host’s organs. The first host died within three days, when they ate part of his brain. They were so hungry, and this was the most nutrient-rich part. The second lasted longer, brain staying intact, but inevitably also died after several days from multiple organ failure. They mostly guessed which ones were vital and which weren’t. Venom finished off his brain afterward anyway. 

Maria had lasted the longest. They were getting the hang of it. Except for one problem: she wanted to die. 

“Just let me die, Venom. It’s over. It’s fucking over. I was meant for this.” 

**“How peculiar. The body is in stable condition, yet the mind has no will to live. Such a strong influence it exerts upon the physiology. Would be more efficient to operate purely on instinct.”**

Venom had learned how to speak. Maria even had started talking to them. She told them stories. People had not been kind to her. To the world, she was a nuisance, sitting on the side of the street, selling her stolen newspapers. She was viewed by the faceless passers-by as a lazy parasite on society. 

She wept. Though the symbiote had not yet fully grasped human emotions, somewhere in their inky quantum depths, they instinctively wept with her. 

Venom had noticed though that there were a few people who had been nice to her, even though they didn’t need to be. Fabio Boca. Stephanie Groven. Eddie Brock. 

There was also this older woman, Jane Filippi, who she’d used to sit with at some sort of outdoor concert place listening to what she called ‘classical music’. Maria didn’t have much taste for it herself, but she had enjoyed Jane’s company anyway. 

Now, it was the seventh day. That’s when Eddie showed up. 

“Eddie!”, she yelled when she spotted him outside the glass cell. 

“Maria?”, he replied, incredulous. 

A new emotion flooded her system which was entirely absent before. The symbiote would later come to learn its name: Hope. Who was this Eddie, that could transform someone so drastically just by being there? Venom had to know. 

It had happened so fast. Red alarms blared along with that lethal high-frequency tone, when he’d shattered the glass, and so shattering them. Venom and Maria both lunged at Eddie, desperate to be free, free at last. It did not occur to Venom then that Maria would die if they left, but this was their chance, their only chance. When they surged into Eddie, splicing their quantum matrix to his DNA, the stars aligned. 

**A perfect match.**

Within 0.4 nanoseconds of bonding with Eddie, they attained symbiosis, and learned yet another new emotion: Love. 

The external dual-observing nervous system which had been peering into the dreamed memory, the remembered dream, rewired its neurons to achieve synaptogenesis, the over-turning of a lifetime’s worldview based on isolation and alienation, but who’s, it was not clear. 

* 

When Eddie had finally come to, his blindfold was soaked. Venom slipped it off him with a thin tendril, but otherwise rested in their human’s Heart Cave silently, saying nothing. Eddie put his hands over that area. 

The sky outside their window had turned dark, and some stars were visible, but not much with all the city’s light pollution. 

“V… could you- could you come out, please? I want to see you.” 

An inky underground creature resurfaced from his chest. Their white eyes and shark grin floated free in the dark of the room like a demonic Cheshire’s Cat. Eddie was not afraid of them, at least not anymore, like he had been in the beginning. 

He grabbed the sides of Venom’s head, pulling them to his face, and between their crescent eyes, planted a gentle kiss. Venom’s eyes closed to narrow slits, and they purred fiercely. They spent a few moments just pressing their foreheads together, exchanging mutual understanding in silent telepathy. 

“Thank you. I think… I understand now. I’m sorry for doubting you, Venom.” 

**“We are… sorry also. For killing Maria. Can you forgive us?”**

“Oh god, V. You don’t have to be sorry. It wasn’t your fault. C’mere, buddy!” 

Growing black muscular arms, the symbiote’s externalized form held, and was held by their human host. Venom cradled Eddie while he let out a few more tears. 

Venom knew then that if Eddie hadn’t been sure before, he was sure then, of what that pulsing radiance in their bond was called: it was Love. Pure and simple. No if’s, and’s, or but’s. 

“From the very beginning… that fast, huh?” 

**“Yes.”**

They cuddled, yes, _cuddled_ , in silence for a few minutes. 

“Hey, V?” 

**“Yes, Eddie?”**

“Venom… I- I love you. Okay?” 

**“We already knew. You didn’t even have to say.”**

“I was afraid. Still am. But I swear, from now on, I’ll try to show it more… I am yours.” 

Venom grinned as the ancient mental shackles came undone. They purred almost violently to shake them off, allowing their liberated minds to reach further into each other. 

**“You are Mine, and We are Yours.”**

“Always.” 

*** 


	6. A Day in the Life of Eddie Brock

*** EDDIE *** 

Jennifer Kao’s chair was swivelled facing the window overlooking downtown. The morning sunlight streaming in cast her office in a soft yellowing glow, clashing with the thick purple carpet. The window was opened, letting in a fresh breeze, with a decided and welcome absence of nail polish odor. 

Eddie beamed, “Just as I promised, Ms. Kao! I did find something better. Page 4! Not bad, huh?” 

She spun around to face him with an exaggerated smile, matching her pearl necklace. 

“I knew you would deliver, Mr. Brock! Your work is excellent as usual. What’s your next pitch?” 

He rubbed the back of his neck. Venom started gently massaging his tensed shoulder muscles from the long hours hunched over a computer. Eddie had put off working on the PsiOnyx case, because he couldn’t afford to piss off Kao for too long. He conceded to quickly whip together some bullshit about how there were three separate snipers who shot President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the one to kill him wasn’t even Lee Harvey Oswald. He felt a bit dirty writing it, but it’s what she wanted, and they needed the money. 

“Ah, well, I was thinking of returning to that PsiOnyx case. Look, I know what you’re thinking! Last time I had a hunch. But now I have _facts_! I have _proof_ that they purchased a ton of Life Foundation assets when they liquidated, and even hired some of their surviving scientists. And soon, I will be interviewing their CEO, Olivia Tyler.” 

“You managed to get an interview with Olivia?”, she raised an eyebrow, sounding almost impressed, drumming her lavender fingernails on her desk. 

“Well… she hasn’t gotten back to me… yet… but she will!” 

She sighed heavily, “Mr. Brock, need I remind you for the hundredth time what our mission statement is? The only reason I’m putting up with your unfortunate obsession with falling off-brand, is because you do continue bringing in good content. Last time, I suggested that you take on the Stalking Shadow topic.” 

**Really want to eat her.**

_V. No._

“Didn’t Pie- Mr. Packer report it already?” 

She paused to take a long sip from her cafe latte. 

**He’s outside the door, by the way. With another cafe latte.**

_He is?_

As strange as it was, that kid wrote a killer article, no pun intended. It made it to Page 1. Although, it was mostly cobbled up from old footage and rumors already floating around on niche message boards, it was the first time that an actual newsletter, if The Fact Channel could even be called that, was reporting on the local cryptid. Eddie hoped that they wouldn’t grow to be any more famous than that. The article didn’t exactly paint them in a positive light either. In fact, they kinda looked like the villain. 

**We are Heroes, Eddie. We only eat Bad People.**

She set her emptied cup on her desk, crowded with papers. 

“Mr. Packer did, indeed. In fact, he brought it up in the first place, but he was just an intern. I offered it to you as a courtesy. Now though, he’s working on a follow-up piece.” 

“Another one?” 

“It’s hot topic. Our readers are hungry, very hungry, for more about this cannibal, Stalking Shadow. And I have a strong feeling Mr. Packer will deliver again. He’s looking for an editor to assist him. I might even find him an intern. Unless you’d like to take on that role? A courtesy.” 

**Told you he’s bad news. We should eat him too.**

_Chill._

“Heh. An intern for an intern?” 

“He’s not an intern anymore. After _that_ debut article, I hired him as a full-time writer.” 

“You what? Oh. Good for him. Guess you need a new coffee bearer?” 

“He has agreed to continue being my coffee bearer, strangely enough, even though I gave him the option otherwise. He is very diligent, that kid. He will go places. You should follow his example.” 

Eddie resisted the urge to roll his eyes. His secret bodymate _very_ slowly wrapped his mid-torso in a light hug, slow enough to not startle him, and he relaxed. 

“Okay. Well, I’m not interested in this Stalking whatever. I have a few other pieces in the works. I’ll forward them to you for feedback.” 

“Very well, Mr. Brock. You may go.” 

When they exited, the golden-haired, suit-wearing youth whizzed by with Kao’s next cafe latte. Through his spectacles, he’d made no eye contact with Eddie, yet his permanent fixture of a smile, usually nervous, seemed to have had the faintest trace of smugness. 

As they walked down the hallway, his other piped up. 

**We had not noticed it before, but now we are sure. That bag of bones is not just bringing her latte. He listens.**

“What, you mean eavesdrops?” 

**Yes.**

“Huh. You think you know a guy.” 

**Better eat him now than later. You want to.**

“Ehh… don’t be so sure about that, pal. I think that’s just you.” 

His other hugged him a bit tighter now, not so subtle. 

* 

The sunny breeze brushed over the grassy plain of Golden Gate Park. Eddie was walking towards the Tea Garden off in the distance, scintillating with thousands of falling pink blossom petals, but his other abruptly pulled him right, instead, towards the Music Pavilion; a giant greek-looking white stone stage, where an outdoor orchestra was playing. 

**She’s this way.**

His sense of smell was heightened, and he could smell the pollen in the air. His other was swimming around in his nostrils, which made him feel like he was holding in a perpetual sneeze. Her scent was nearby. 

On the way, he eyed a particular cluster of cherry-blossom trees off in the Tea Garden where they had patrolled one evening, encountering a shady drug dealer trying to sell to some high schoolers. 

They ate him, of course. Eddie didn’t want to admit it, but clawing and biting into human flesh was bothering him less and less. At the end of the day, it was just meat. 

_Is that how Dan keeps his cool during surgery? Like what he’s cutting into isn’t a living, fucking person, but ‘just meat’?_

In fact, his tongue watered slightly when he thought about biting into a plump, juicy brain. Maybe that was Venom though. It was becoming increasingly difficult to discern where his amorphous symbiote ended, and he began. 

**“We should take his methamphetamine. Might be fun”** , his other had said. 

“What?! No fuckin’ way, V. And- and wouldn’t that make me, like, a total hypocrite, if we kill a guy for dealing drugs, and then go do some of his goddamned meth? Nah, you’re crazy, V.” 

**“Except, Eddie, you are not a high schooler, and not just any human, either. We can metabolize or purge any chemical within your body, and repair any damage done.”**

In the end, Eddie gave in, and said, “Fuck it, why not?” 

After that, they were so hyped up on dopamine and adrenaline, that they spent the rest of the night riding The Venomizer, way past the speed limit all over San Francisco, ignoring red lights, wind in his face, and helmeted by the top half of Venom’s jawless fanged head, as if his cranium was being chomped down on. The entire night, as his alien other flapped behind like a black cape, he shouted “Woohoo!” and “Fuck yeah!” at the top of his lungs. He slept in the whole next day. 

“Just to make this clear, babe: that was a one time thing. There will not be a repeat.” 

**“We’ll see about that”** , his trickster alien had replied, chuckling darkly. 

Those cherry-blossoms must have soaked up the mess they’d left because the soil was clean now, and the petals looked a little redder than they did before. 

The classical orchestra drew louder as they approached the rows of wooden, green audience benches. Deep cellos and trumpets, pierced by sharp violins and flutes, animated the daytime atmosphere. For Eddie, classical music was _okay_ , but he never really got into it. 

In his chest, he felt a warm, bubbling feeling that vibrated with the harmonics. 

They wandered towards the seated woman at the far end. She had a rainbow quilt wrapped around her, over her knitted rose-pink sweater. 

There was a huge dog laying on the paved ground beside her, with its fur shining bright gold in the sunlight. It raised its head at them. 

**He smells us.**

“Who? The dog? He smells you?” 

**Yes. Canines have an acute olfactory sense, like us.**

“Guess that answers that. Didn’t know you even had a smell, V.” 

The dog stood up and stared them down as they approached, but he had his silly tongue lolling out, so if he was hostile, he certainly didn’t look the part. Eddie did prefer dogs to cats anyway. 

The woman’s eyes had wrinkles which connoted age, but they also softened into smiling eyes, making her look both old and young at the same time. Her voluminous curly, brown hair blended into the beige scarf above her rainbow quilt. With eyes closed, her head swayed to the music, blissful. On her lap was an almost finished knitting project: a rainbow scarf. 

“Ahem- Excuse me, ma’am. Hi, I’m Eddie Brock. I was a friend of Maria Reuben. Are you Jane Filippi?” 

She opened her wise, patient eyes, and smiled warmly at him with her whole face, but she did not make direct eye contact with him. It was both welcoming and unwelcoming at the same time. 

“That’s me! Maria is a sweetheart. Haven’t seen her in a while. Come, sit! Enjoy the music. Oh, I love this band. You said your name was… Eddie?” 

And they talked. 

Eddie found that Jane looked somewhat like an older, scruffier version of his mother. She was very easy to talk to. They talked about things like classical music, about music in general, about dogs, about Spanish culture, about New Mexico where Jane grew up, about New York where Eddie grew up, about economic inequality and social injustice, about the current state of homelessness in San Fran, and of course, about Maria. This mature woman had certainly seen a lot, which was interesting since she was blind. 

“His name is Angel”, she said, gesturing to her dog, “You can pet him, he’s friendly.” 

Her Golden Retriever was a guide dog, and she was unemployed, receiving disability checks from the government. 

“Angel? Lovely. C’mere, buddy!”, Eddie cooed, ruffling the fur on the dog’s back. 

_At least Angel lets me pet him, unlike Mr. Belvedere._

He did like dogs better than cats. 

**Are there Bad Dogs?**

_Even if there were, Angel is a good boy._

“Aren’t you Angel? Aren’t you such a good boy?”, he cooed, “Oh, who’s a good boy! Who’s a good boy!” 

Angel the good boy started wagging his tail, and panting tongue out. Jane, smiling, was finishing up the last touches on her knitted rainbow scarf. How was she able to knit without seeing? 

_Maybe I should get a dog?_

He could feel a slight pang of jealousy from his other, which was unexpected. 

_Are you… are you jealous, babe?_

**What? Of course not.**

Eddie grinned wide, _You’re jealous!_

**Of a dirty mutt? How ridiculous.**

He chuckled, which just looked to Jane like he was having fun playing with Angel, and he was. Angel was loving it. Venom had never seemed to get jealous with Anne. So it was weird that now, his other was getting jealous over Eddie showing affection to this random dog. That kind of said a lot about the alien. 

_I didn’t know you could get jealous, buddy! I love this._

**We are not! These unfounded accusations are-!**

_Hey, love, it’s okay. It builds character!,_ he reassured his other, while still messing up Angel’s golden fur, _You’re still my Number One._

Angel was the name of Jane’s husband who passed away years ago. They had a 16-year-old daughter named Abigail, who she lived with out of an RV. Her daughter found work to support them both, but when he asked the follow-up question, “What kind of work?”, the woman’s smiling eyes had turned into a saddened frown. He didn’t press further. 

Other park-goers were shuffling in and out from the benches to listen to the music, though none stayed as long as they did. The band members seemed entirely focused on their own playing. 

“Do you have a sweetheart yourself?”, she asked. 

“Oh, uhh…” 

He could feel his other listening, expectantly. 

“In a way?”, he considered, “I guess I do.” 

He felt his heart doing cartwheels. Venom wasn’t hard to please. Eddie could take a dump, and that would win him a standing ovation. 

“How is she?”, she asked casually, still knitting. 

Her unseeing eyes were neither on him, nor on the orchestra, nor on her knitting, but just staring nowhere. It was slightly eerie. 

“Well… it’s sort of a ‘he’. I think? Actually, I’m not really sure…” 

“Ah, that’s wonderful. I’m glad that you have him… or her, or _them_.” 

**Bingo.**

Jane had several friends in the LGBT community, so the idea of gender fluidity wasn’t alien to her. Eddie wondered if her rainbow clothing was related to that, but he didn’t want to assume. 

“Ever been?”, she asked, talking about the world famous San Francisco Pride. 

“Oh… no, I haven’t, actually. I mean, I’m straight.” 

She didn’t even seem bothered by the contradiction. 

“That’s okay. Pride is for everyone, straight allies too. It’s a great time! You should check it out this year, maybe with your partner.” 

Partner. 

“Aha… right…” 

His other didn’t seem to notice the subtext in their conversation, or else he was just mesmerized by the music. 

This would be a good time to change the subject. He had now sufficiently worked up the nerve to tell her. 

“I wanted to let you know that Maria passed away.” 

Her knitting stopped. 

“Oh.” 

When Jane asked how she died, Eddie thought about coming up with some lie, but then felt that she deserved the truth. Well, most of it anyway. He told her about how she was kidnapped and tortured in the Life Foundation, but left out some of the more gruesome details, as well anything about aliens. Jane looked sad, but also understanding. The band on stage, at that time, also happened to be playing a slow, melancholic tune. 

Eddie found that he could say anything to her, and not feel judged. This was proven when Venom inevitably started being a total creep. 

**You are attracted to her. She reminds you of Sarah.**

“Bug off, V! And how do you even know about Sarah?” 

**A dream.**

“Excuse me?”, she blinked, surprised at his sudden outburst. 

“Oh sorry, that wasn’t for you… Uhh…” 

“Are you schizophrenic?” 

“Uhh… noo-ye-n-maybeee…?” 

“I have a friend, Mike, whose schizophrenic. He talks to his twenty-two friends in front of me, but I’ve never talked to any them myself. You should meet him! Maybe you two would get along?” 

After that, Eddie just flat out started talking to Venom out loud. Jane even talked to Venom, and Eddie would say out loud what he replied. 

He placed his hand on his chest, to give some attention to the little guy, in case he was feeling left out, but was surprised to find his gooey bodymate swaying in tune to the music. Eddie had gotten the impression that Venom disliked music, probably from that one time his neighbor blared heavy metal at max volume. After they’d asked the guy to ‘turn it down’, they never had to ask again. 

“V, you’re really diggin’ this classical, aren’t you?” 

**It is soothing, and it reminds us of Maria.**

“V says it’s soothing”, he repeated to Jane. 

“Your friend has good taste”, she remarked with a blind wink. 

Jane actually offered Eddie her hand-knitted scarf when she was finished. He politely declined, feeling bad since he had no cash on him to pay for it, and she must have been working on it for a long while. However, she insisted, so he couldn’t say ‘no’. The craftsmanship on it was incredible. Each color blended into the next like a rainbow. How was she able to do that without seeing? 

Eddie figured, correctly, that everything she was wearing, she made herself. 

“Why don’t you sell your wares?”, he suggested, “This is high quality stuff! Probably could fetch a mean price with an online store.” 

“Nahhhh! Then it becomes a job!”, she made a face, sticking her tongue out, “I just do it for fun because my hands are free. I wear ‘em, or give ‘em away to friends, or to those who need it.” 

“You can’t get rich with that kind of mentality”, he said, but then pondered, “But maybe that’s the kind of mentality you need to be happy? Huh.” 

“Money doesn’t buy everything”, she smirked like it wasn’t just an opinion, but a universal secret that only few knew. 

Come to think of it, Venom seemed to be happy most of the time, even when there wasn’t any particular reason to be. He rubbed his chest, where his other rippled with the music of strings singing through the air. 

**We are happy just to be with you Eddie.**

“It’s that simple, huh, V? Will you teach me the Secret to Happiness, Oh, Wise One?” 

**Gladly. Your happiness is the sole purpose of our existence.**

“Well, when you put it like that…”, he replied, beginning to blush. 

Jane didn’t seem to mind only hearing one side of their conversation. She reached into her pocket and pulled out some doggie treats and gave them to Angel, petting him and smoothing out the fur that Eddie had tussled up. 

Some of the other park-goers gave the two crazy people laughing over the music dirty looks, moving away. Neither of them could give two shits. 

Eddie decided he liked classical music after all. 

* 

The couch was really sinking in like a valley from their massive weight, as Eddie lay there in a sweatshirt and shorts, absent-mindedly watching the news, munching and crunching on potato chips. 

_Maybe we should get a new couch?_

The soft patter of light rain could be heard from their window, and the pattering was growing louder by the minute. 

He eyed Anne’s latest text which read, 

“staying out of trouble, u 2?” 

She was always checking up on them. Seeing the literate lawyer who spoke Legalese using texting shortcuts like some kind of teenager was always amusing. He texted back, 

“innocent until proven guilty ;)” 

**“Eddie, can we have the phone back?”**

“Oh yeah, here ya go, bud.” 

He handed it to the hairless, black dog protruding through his sweatshirt at the abdomen. Eddie had wrapped his canine pet in the rainbow scarf. The contrast between the vibrant colors and his other’s pitch-black gooeyness was stark, and made the alien look comically flamboyant. 

Venom hit up the Candy Crush app he'd installed on his phone. From the numbers, they were absolutely crushing that high score. It was funny seeing the killer alien so into a game about shiny candy. 

Eddie scratched under his other’s canine chin, seeing if he could distract them from their game. His slime was not slimy at all, nor wet, but rather dry, silky, and like soft, warm rubber. The texture and consistency was not of this Earth. Very different from petting an actual dog. 

“Hey love, so I always call you a ‘he’, but you refer to yourself as ‘we’. Do you find it offensive if I call you-?” 

**“No, Eddie. You may refer to us as ‘he’, if it is easier for you. We say ‘we’ because it makes the most sense as a pronoun for us.”**

“Why’s that?” 

**“A few reasons. The first is that we are a-gendered, non-binary. The next two are trickier to explain.”**

“I’m listenin’.” 

**“Well, the Klyntar do not have organs, cells, or even ‘particles’ in the way some of your scientists might model ‘matter’. Instead, we are composed of wavelets composed of wavelets, ad infinitum. We are motion made matter. Not quite liquid. Not quite solid. That is why we can adapt to any form.”**

“Is that why you refer to yourself in the plural? I mean, I usually just think of you as a single person, Venom, but… before, you said you were… what? Continuous?” 

**“Yes. We are like water, and you, Eddie, are like the cup. We mold ourselves to your shape. You make us what we are. You make us better.”**

“D’awww… you sappy ‘lil goo ball!” 

Venom’s canine form dissolved into an orb face, and he started adorably bouncing around like squishy jello, wrapped in rainbows. Did he realize how often he was being unintentionally cute? 

“And the third reason?” 

**“It follows from the second. We are the summation of all previous hosts. That includes Maria, Anne, that puppy, and millions of others since before coming to Earth. Hence, ‘we’.”**

“That’s a weird thing to think about. You are _old_ , bro!” 

Eddie pet his black orb on the head, and he leaned into their touch, purring, and then appropriately morphing into a cat, or more like a saber-tooth really, with two long ivory tusks. 

**“Hunt tonight?”** , the saber-tooth spoke. 

“Not tonight, love. I think we gotta be more careful. I feel kinda paranoid. As if we’re being watched, now. It could get complicated if law enforcement decides to take this cryptid business seriously. Plus… it’s pouring. Nobody’s gonna be out.” 

Venom grumbled in disappointment, and Eddie rubbed his head with his greasy hand to soothe him, chip crumbs falling all over his saber-tooth head. 

He eyed the copy of The Fact Channel newsletter on his coffee table, the one with Pietro’s Page 1 piece on The Stalking Shadow, about the cannibalistic demon roaming the dark alleys and rooftops of San Francisco at night. 

“Besides, once Dan figures out what nutrients you need, we won’t need to anymore.” 

**“No more? But Eddie! It’s not just about nutrients. It’s about the thrill of the hunt.”**

“When you put it like that, it really makes me question whether we actually are the good guys.” 

They had gone to see Dan a few times at the hospital. He gave him physical examinations, which for some reason, always required Eddie to be in the nude. He didn’t understand why that was necessary, and it made him feel extremely awkward, since Dan was his exe’s boyfriend and all. 

**“You also get an erection, Eddie, when Doctor Dan touches you.”**

“Wow, V! You had to remind me. I hope Dan doesn’t tell Anne that. I would _die_ of embarrassment. He can’t, right? Doctor’s confidentiality?” 

**“Nothing to be ashamed of, Eddie. You like being touched. Heheheh.”**

Suddenly, a dozen tendrils sprouted from all around his body, and they looped back around to tickle him everywhere. He doubled over laughing, spilling his chips across the wooden floor. Venom continued casually playing Candy Crush on his phone, all the while. 

“Hahaha! V! Oh my god! Hahaha! Stop! This is so not fair!” 

The tickling did not relent. He was quite ticklish on his ribs, waistline, lower back, inner thighs, and _especially_ his feet. As Venom tickled Eddie in other areas too, he started vocalizing other soft sounds which were not just laughter. Panting breaths, and gentle gasps of pleasure. But the tickling was intense enough that he could pretend he was just being tickled there also. 

“Ahahaha! Please stop! Hahaha! Venom! I’m gonna piss myself!” 

**“That would be funny”** , his tormenter sniggered. 

As Eddie contracted his pelvic floor muscles to avoid wetting himself, the pressure caused him to begin getting an erection. Venom had stopped paying attention to Candy Crush. Eddie couldn’t pretend anymore, either. This was getting out of hand. 

“Urrgh! Fuck! Venom! Stop damnit!” 

Eddie’s irritation struck a chord along their bond, and the tendrils relented, but not entirely. He really needed to pee now, but the tickling continued. 

“Venom! _Pleeeease_!”, he begged pleadingly. 

Suddenly, he was saved by the bell as his phone bleeped in Venom’s tendrils. To his great relief, all of the tickling tendrils ceased their assault at once. Venom handed him his phone. 

**“It’s for you, Eddie. From Olivia Tyler.”**

Eddie immediately recovered, sitting up, eyes wide. His heart beat faster, and he was losing his erection. The bathroom could wait. 

“Fuck. Moment of truth...” 

After a moment looking over the email, Eddie frowned. 

“Damn, she declined my interview.” 

The pattering rain outside the window had gotten loud, and there was the distant rumbling of thunder. 

**“So what now?”**

“I guess… now we have to do it the hard way. Up for some fun, V?” 

Venom’s nightmare grin spread from ear to ear, if he had ears. 

**“Oh yes. Yes! Dearest Eddie, what exactly did you have in mind?”**

Eddie reflected his other with his signature toothy grin. It was full of shark teeth. 

“We’re breaking into PsiOnyx.” 

*** 


	7. PsiOnyx: We Save Lives!

*** VENOM ***

A symphony of crickets sang in the moonlit bushes enshrouding Venom’s bulking seven-and-a-half-foot humanoid form, biomass threaded into ripped muscle, veined white. Like a silent predator, they stalked through the shadowed-green foliage, squishing damp grass, sensitive tongue leading the way forth. The earlier rain had stopped.

Green gave way to the sudden sharp edge of cement parking lot, bathed in floodlights along the wall of the looming warehouse building. It was attached to a taller corporate one, with a brightly lit dark indigo brain logo near its top floor. 

This was one the largest warehouses owned by PsiOnyx, located in the industrial park near the outskirts of town. They had arrived at a far off road on The Venomizer, and then masked into the surrounding forest. 

There was just one camera on its wall scanning the parking lot, from one end to the other, and back again. 

**No cars. Do not taste other human presences outdoors.**

_And indoors?_

**Not sure. Will see.**

They waited for the camera to look away, and then, like a cheetah, they bolted across the lot towards the loading dock. At the shutter door, their taloned hand gripped the heavy padlock at the bottom like a bolt cutter, and they snapped it. With their insane strength, they lifted the shutter door, and ducked inside. 

**No alarm. That’s good.**

_Don’t jinx it._

The ceiling was impossibly high, and the interior looked much bigger than on the outside. With their enhanced night vision, they could make out the countless aisles of storage racks filled with crates and boxes atop pallets. There were no cameras in here. 

_No cameras inside? Must be hiding something._

**Smell something funny. This way.**

Nearer to the center of the complex, they found over a dozen large green crates with black-and-yellow striped tape encircling their top edges. 

**Ah. Gunpowder.**

_So… biotech medical company on the surface… weapons manufacturing on the inside?_ _Go figure. ‘We Save Lives’, my ass._

They opened the crate to reveal the guns. The handheld within them slipped up their biomass to their arm, and all the way down along it, until their hand produced a phone like a magic trick. 

_Say cheese!_

Flash!, went the camera. 

Moving further along, they saw crates labelled ‘WARNING: BIO-HAZARDOUS’. Flash! 

_Guess they don’t give a damn about the Geneva Convention?_

Another series of crates were labelled, “WARNING: COGNITO-HAZARDOUS”. Flash! 

_Hazardous to… the mind? Maybe we shouldn’t open that._

Instead, they opened and peered into another random blue crate on a different set of pallets, which had something other than guns. Flash! 

_Looks like a cross between a grenade and a dildo. The hell are these guys making in here?_

Replacing the cover, they continued down another dark aisle.

**People coming.**

_The fuck?_

Blinding lights flooded the area with a dramatic ‘KA-CHUNG’. Eddie’s heart skipped a beat. Leaping up the adjacent rack, claw upon claw, they scaled to the dizzying top bunk. Below, figures wearing reflective, blue hazmat suits filtered into the area, meandering around. 

_This rack isn’t gonna tip over, right? Whew… Deep breaths…_

**Eleven… thirteen… no, fifteen of them. Those suits made them hard to smell. They were quiet coming in. An ambush.**

_Shit, maybe we triggered some kind of silent alarm?_

**Maybe. Now what?**

_I don’t know, V. Wait?_

**Don’t like this, Eddie. We should leave.**

_They haven’t spotted us yet. Wait, those are some weird looking guns-_

A voice down below said, “Are these scratch marks…? Shit! Above!” 

ZAP! Their calf felt like it had just been stung by a heated needle, followed by another to the head, not enough to _really_ hurt, but unexpected enough to knock them off their perch. The sting had come without warning, faster than bullets, in fact, exactly at the speed of light. 

They landed on the ground like a cat, and rolled forward with grace. Baring their claws at four of the blue hazmat men, they roared at the top of their lungs, tongue flailing, saliva flying. 

**“Hello, tasty morsels!”**

“Holy shi-”, one of the men stammered, dropping his weird gun. 

They pounced, bulldozing two men near their left, slashing at their visors to obscure their vision. Five fingers gathered to a deadly spearhead, poised to impale. 

_Don’t kill them, V!_

Venom grunted annoyed. 

A sudden ‘BANG’, and then everywhere was engulfed in yellow-green toxic smoke. Blue beams sliced through like a techno rave concert, slashing at their pseudo-skin, like being flogged by whips. 

Bullets they could bounce off their rubbery-matter, but these lasers tore right through, though not deeply enough to reach their human. 

The air was thick with smoke, and it tasted disgusting. 

**Nerve gas. Can’t hurt us.**

Two more blue hazmat men joined the ensuing chaos. 

Picking up a man off the floor, they hurled him into those two, blocking their incoming blue-lights, and knocking them down like bowling pins. 

_You killed him!_

**No. They fire freely. Those lights are stopped by the suits.**

Without anything that could hurt them, they made short work of the six hazmats unfortunate enough to find them first, but not before one screamed into his radio, “It’s one of those fucking parasites! Skirth!”. Venom knocked him out. 

_Skirth?_

**Our cue to leave.**

They dashed back towards where they entered, but six were waiting there. Blue lines dissected space, and ripped at them painfully where they intersected. 

To their side was a gap in the rack. They leapt through, and in those spare seconds, adjusted their quantum rhythm to resonate with the now learned radiation signature. 

On the other side, they ran head on towards blue death, which now had all the effect of dollar-store laser-pointers. Another shot them with a dart, pumping them full of horse tranquilizer, which Venom safely metabolized. 

**Just chemicals.**

They pounced one of them, and with shoulder tentacles, tripped another two by the ankles. One still standing had gotten out a phone, and it began to emit a high-frequency tone. 

The symbiote-human yelled, covering their ears which did nothing as the sound infected their biomass armor, and they retreated back further into the complex. Their symphonic vibrato was slightly disrupted by the discordant cacophony. 

_What, is that a fucking anti-symbiote app? For real?_

**The phone has shitty, low-volume audio. We can bear it. Just got caught off guard.**

More of them had taken out their phones. 

_They don’t even have fuckin’ pockets! Are they pullin’ them from their ass? Let’s find a different exit._

**Roger that.**

They far outran them towards the other end, spotting two large doors leading into the corporate section. Swinging open, four more blue hazmat men filed in holding strange black devices, promising disaster. 

**Those things… from the dream.**

Fear-instinct changed their course to clawing up the side of a rack. Just as they gripped a pallet, something not material, but deafeningly loud, barrelled into them. Their armor painfully dis-cohered into strands and blobs, and then they were falling. 

Falling. 

Falling. 

Death by rock-solid floor rushed up to greet them, but they had a better idea. 

Flinging their dis-coherent strands down, it cushioned them, and they trampolined back to standing, full-body armor recovering almost immediately. 

“There was a guy in there!”, one of the hazmats said. 

Venom had kept Eddie’s face helmeted. 

They dodged to the side. The air they just vacated imploded in high-tones. Leaping, they scaled the opposite rack up, evading the discordant non-music. Crates beside them were blasted off, smashing loudly down below. Reaching top, they leapt across the racks, adding distance. The cacophony pierced and echoed throughout the warehouse, sending shivers down their spine and quantum pseudo-structure. 

_We’re… okay? Shit, we’re okay! And damnit, we’re back up here again._

**Those frequencies are above 6000 Hertz. Too high to hurt us bad. Lethal range is 4000 to 6000.**

_Ha! Motherfuckers! They think they’re sooo smart!_

**A familiar smell is coming. The one Maria hates.**

A woman in a lab-coat walked in through the two doors behind the hazmats. 

“Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?”, she berated. 

“Dr. Skirth! You shouldn’t be here! It’s not safe…” 

“You haven’t incapacitated the parasite?” 

“We hit it with the SAP Guns… it was barely effective, ma’am.” 

“What did you set it to?” 

“6600 Hertz.” 

“Idiot! I told you! You have to set it to- Ahhhh! Holy Mary mother of-!” 

Venom stampeded through them like a rhino, and literally picked her up, and raced down the corporate corridor with her flung over their shoulder screaming. They rounded a corner, galloping three-limbed with their free arm. They crashed through the large glass window at the end of the hall with their unburdened shoulder, leaping into the cool, moonlit outdoors. Her screams were more annoying than the sonic weaponry had been, so Venom gagged her with a tentacle. 

They bounded across cement, scaled the chain-linked fence with barbed wire up top, snapping it, and leapt deep into the shelter of the trees and damp grass. Their heart was beating like drum ’n’ bass, and blood so pumped up with adrenaline, it was better than meth. 

When they were far enough into the enchanted woods, babbling brook nearby, they let her down, still tied up and gagged with tendrils. She looked terrified, and they could taste her purple fear. 

_Let me talk to her, V!_

Their face split in half, revealing Eddie. 

“Dora? It’s me, Eddie Brock. We won’t hurt you. If we remove your gag, can you promise not to scream?” 

She made a face of shocked disbelief, but then nodded her head, and the tentacle was removed. 

“Eddie?”, she asked incredulous, “It’s you in there?” 

“Yeah it’s me. You’re alive?” 

“Black…? Is this SYM-A01?! Our records state that it died? This shouldn’t be possible.” 

“Yeah, no, Venom is alive. How are _you_ alive?” 

“Is that what you’re calling it? And you’ve attained stable symbiosis! How did you manage that?” 

“Well, V says we’re a perfect match, so… but wait, you’re supposed to be dead!” 

“Is it controlling you?” 

“No! No. We’re partners. We work together. Are you gonna explain how you’re still alive?” 

“Do I get to stay alive?” 

“This conversation is feeling kinda one-sided. But yes, we won’t eat you…” 

Venom formed a second head beside Eddie’s, face splitting vertically into iron-maiden teeth, tongue lolling out, white eyes staring down their prey. Moonlight glinted off their dark mirror skin. 

**“We won’t?”** , their gravelly voice grated. 

“Holy crap, it talks?”, she exclaimed, wide-eyed. 

**“No shit. We’re not eating her, Eddie?”**

“No, V. She’s the reason I met you in the first place.” 

“Then let me go”, Skirth demanded. 

“If we let you go… you won’t try to run?” 

“Well as long as you don’t try to eat me, I won’t.” 

They released her, and she regained her balance on the wet grass, lab-coat muddied.

**“But she called us a parasite! We are not a parasite!”**

Skirth looked scared for a moment, but when the symbiote made no move to eat her, she apologized, 

“Sorry, some of the staff tend to use that word. Drake was the one who insisted on the word ‘symbiote’.” 

“So the guy had one redeeming quality.” 

“I wouldn’t even go that far”, she quipped, some of her fear abating. 

“Heh… Anyways. Dora. I went to your friggin’ funeral. Your goddamn kids were there crying! How are you alive?” 

Skirth looked down, sadly. 

**“She has machines in her.”**

“She has _what_ in her?”

She looked up and explained, “I was in a coma after SYM-A02 nearly killed me. It digested many of my internal organs. Olivia saved my life.” 

“And your family…?” 

“They know I’m alive now. I was out of it for a few months though.” 

“Shit… you didn’t contact me or anything.” 

“Olivia runs a tight operation, and she didn’t want me to contact many people, least of all the reporter who snuck into and took down the Life Foundation. Speaking of which, I’m sorry for what Drake and his thugs did to you. I never meant for that to happen to you.” 

“Ah, that’s old news. I’m over it. But, shit, you work for PsiOnyx? Aren’t they engaging in unethical human testing?” 

“No. Or at least, not anymore…” 

“They’re not?” 

“Not for many years. That was before Olivia. Trust me, I wouldn’t be working here if they did.” 

“Okay… then what about them buying out Life Foundation assets and personnel?” 

“Those staff members work for me now. I’m head of the Xeno department.” 

“Jesus, _Xeno_ department? You’re not testing on symbiotes are you?” 

“We have no living samples. We’d like one, though.” 

“Just to be clear, Venom is _not_ for sale. And… the hell? You guys made anti-symbiote weapons?” 

“Some of my staff are convinced that Earth could be invaded at any moment by millions of the things. We’ve been trying to secure a contract with the U.S. military, producing sonic weaponry called SAP Guns, but they just laughed at us. Even the guys at Area 51.” 

“The guys at Area 51 didn’t take your alien thing seriously?” 

“No.” 

“Guess that answers that mystery… And what’s a SAP Gun?” 

“Sonic Anti-Parasite Gun.” 

**“Anti-Parasite Gun?!? Eddie, we should just go back there and kill them all.”**

The color seemed to drain from Skirth’s already dimly-lit face, and the purple perfume returned. 

Eddie exclaimed, “Venom! You can’t just say things like that in front of people. Dora, he’s joking. We’re not gonna do that. Look, we didn’t kill anyone, I don’t think? We don’t kill…” 

**“…unless they are Bad People.”**

Skirth looked back and forth between them, confused. 

Then she rebuked, “Uh huh. So. You mind explaining to me what the hell you were doing breaking into our high security warehouse?” 

**“Weak security, more like”** , Venom mocked, grinning vertically. 

She eyed the symbiote warily. 

Eddie replied, “I, uh… well, to be honest, I thought you guys were like… evil, or something.” 

She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. 

“ _Evil_?” 

“Nevermind. So, uh, you’re not gonna, like, go tell ‘em about us are you?” 

She blew out air, “Well, they’re going to ask me questions. Obviously.” 

“Tell them you scared us off…” 

She half-giggled, mildly amused, “ _I_ scared you off?” 

“...with your… phone app thing.” 

“Oh! The prototype software. Hmm, that might work.” 

Eddie put on an exaggerated voice like the commercials, “Got an annoying parasite you just can’t get rid of? There’s an app for that!… You gonna publish that on the app store? I might want a download.” 

**“Eddie...”**

“Aw, I’m just teasing, V. I love you”, he said as he head-butted their sideways-mouthed head. 

Venom licked up the side of Eddie’s face with their freakishly long tongue, earning them a laugh from their host. It made them feel appreciated.

When they looked back at Skirth, her face was like she just checked under her shoe and discovered a turd. 

They both just stood around staring at each other; the soft chirping of crickets becoming noticeable again. Off in the distance, back where they came from, they heard the wailing of police sirens. 

Eddie broke first, “Okaaay… this is awkward.” 

Dora flashed him a funny look that connoted agreement. 

**“Home, Eddie?”**

“Yeah, I think we’re going to go home now. You can find your way back, Dora?” 

“Uhh, yeah.” 

“Alrighty... Bye then…?”, their host said awkwardly. 

“Yeah. Bye”, she put curtly, as she began to walk off, looking somewhat shell-shocked. 

Venom piloted their human to walk in the opposite direction towards where they'd left The Venomizer, since he didn’t seem to be making any move. 

Then they heard her pause and turn. 

“Hey, Eddie?” 

“Yeah?” 

“You still have the same number?” 

“I do.” 

“I’ll contact you.”

*** 


	8. Like Water

*** EDDIE ***

Eddie awoke, but kept his eyelids shut. It didn’t happen often, but it was always annoying to have to get up to pee in the middle of the night. There was faint swishing too, like water, which could be heard, just to remind him. He was still really tired, and it was hard to move. His muscles were aching pretty bad from the earlier workout. He had been so pumped up with energy after, that he thought he’d stay up the whole night. Plus he had felt so horny too. It had been so long. However, fatigue took over when he finally hit the springs. 

He opened his eyes. The ceiling was lit up with stars. They were not real stars, of course, but bright five-pointed shapes that ran across the bedroom. It was an electronic, disco lamp his father had gotten him for his birthday. It had made him feel safe in the lonely darkness, like he was being watched over. He was. 

One of the projected stars flickered, and then disappeared. Then another one, and another. One by one, they faded away, and the room grew a bit darker each time. There was a subtle ripple reverberating through his body, a soft rumbling vibration. That was enough to clue him in. 

Indeed, it usually only happened when his sleep schedule was really messed up. Then, he’d wake up, but not really. He tried his arms again. Nothing. He kicked at his legs, but they wouldn’t move. The stars were all gone now, and he could feel a dark presence at the foot of his bed, watching him. 

_Uh oh._

This hadn’t happened for decades now. The last might’ve been when he was in his teens. If there was something that rivalled his fear of heights, a near second might be those encounters he had with his personal sleep paralysis demon. It was no longer at the foot of his bed. 

Blinking up at the ceiling in the drowsy darkness, it was hard to make out what exactly he was looking at. The overall shape was a mystery, but the wide grin was unmistakeable. The dagger teeth glistened as the drool dripped down onto his cheek, warm. The way those predatory crescent eyes glared into his soul, condensed the haziness back into sharp focus. What was he doing so close to his face? 

“V- Venom?”, Eddie mumbled sleepily, scratching his bare abdomen. 

Feeling a bit sweaty, he kicked off the bedsheet around his legs, which caused his night-time boner to strain against his boxers. His muscles still ached slightly from earlier. But he could move now. 

Straining his neck to the side, he looked around his room. It was flooded with water, just lower than the mattress itself. The water was pitch black.

He turned back to look at the shadowed visage. The maw opened to a guttural purr, as a long pink tongue slid out tracing wetly along his jawline before retracting again. What if? 

Half-thinking, he craned his neck up to plant between his other’s eyes a quick kiss, something he’d been doing, and which felt natural to do. His other just continued silently staring into his eyes, so deeply he had to look away for a second. He knew the alien never slept, but did he spend his nights watching him like this? Knowing that, he might never sleep again. 

Yet that lipless grin just floated there, inviting. They shared a body, and they spent every living moment together, never apart. Their love for one another was unconditional. They would literally die for each other. This was an intimacy unrivalled, and it was becoming difficult to pretend he didn’t know where this was all leading. His symbiote knew already, though. It was just a matter of time. Well, better get a move on. 

He raised his head again, but this time planted the kiss on the edge of the alien’s lips, and the edges of that wicked grin curled up. 

**“You missed.”**

His other intoned a seductive growl, echoing in the hollow darkness. Through the tight bond they shared, words were not necessary. Eddie knew what his bodymate wanted, and it was none other than him, all of him. It was just a matter of how much he was willing to give. He hasn’t given much yet, so he could probably afford just a little more. 

He raised his head once again. Third time’s the charm. He kissed Venom lightly on the lips, before letting his head fall back on the pillow. Wow, that was their first kiss. Just a quick peck, though. Couldn’t hurt. 

**“About time.”**

His other descended on him, and their lips met again, and this time, did not part so soon. In his drowsy, and horny stupor, it was easier just to go with it. He wrapped his arms around the dark figure, pulling them closer so his head could stay resting on the pillow. His heart beat faster, but his brain was still foggy. 

Minutes flew by in a dreamy haze, and he hadn’t even noticed when they had progressed to tongue. The alien’s saliva didn’t really taste like anything, or perhaps it tasted just like his own. He had to admit, he liked the way that freaky tongue could enter and fill his whole mouth. 

He reflexively pushed his hand underneath his boxers, wrapping it around his erection. 

_Oh, fuck yeah._

The demon stuck his tongue a bit deeper, knowingly. There was a palpable absence of tentacles. They could be holding him down, and exploring every inch of his naked skin. Why weren’t they? He could tell that Venom caught that, which was confirmed when he raised away for a brief moment to ask, 

**“Is that what you want?”**

It was, but he pulled his hand back out. 

_What am I doing?_

No, this was as far as he wanted to go for now, despite his throbbing hardness. Also, he still felt achy in places. They hadn’t had a real scuffle like that in a while. Still, it felt like he needed to burst, but something in him held back. There would be time for that. 

They continued. The tongues danced and twirled in the ballroom of Eddie’s mouth. It made sense to do it there, as the demon’s tongue was longer, and Eddie’s teeth were… not as sharp. 

It was surreal. Except this was not a dream. Or if it was, if Venom really visited him in his fantasyland, and they kissed a dream kiss, would it count? Oh well, he would deal with the consequences tomorrow. 

That day would soon approach, as it was becoming harder to stay aware now, and his kissing was becoming half-hearted and sloppy. His other must have noticed, when he finally pulled away.

That demon advisor which watched over him soothed, 

**“Rest, sweet prince.”**

It didn’t take long for him to sink down through his mattress, and slip one dream layer deeper, falling asleep for real. 

* 

The lumpy couch sunk in beneath Eddie’s great weight as he lay there in his gray tank-top and red boxers. On his chest, Venom rested as a blobby orb, with white crescents for eyes and a fanged grin, ravaging his cheesy Doritos while watching the morning news. Eddie pet him with his free hand, holding the phone to his ear with the other. 

The TV had been reporting about the break-in at PsiOnyx the previous night. There was a short clip of the warehouse, and of crates marred with giant claw-like scratches. Some men seemed to be shouting, and slapping at the cameras to stop the filming, though the audio was muted. There was an annoying glare on the screen, from the sunlight streaming in, so Venom reached a tentacle over to shut the blinds. 

The voice-over stated that the company was being very uncooperative with local law enforcement, and were not giving out any details as to what happened. 

They cut to a hospital, and mentioned that although a few of the assaulted staff had suffered concussions, there were no serious injuries. Phew. That was a load off his conscience. 

Another cut, and a very short, African-looking woman with a thin afro was swarmed by reporters as she walked out of the building. It was Olivia Tyler. She pushed past them with her two bodyguards, looking irritated. Then, they transitioned to the next unrelated news segment about some arson and gang violence. 

“Mind-reading technology?!? Are you joking?”, Eddie asked flabbergasted over the phone. 

The alien muted the TV, and Eddie could feel his other connecting to his eardrums with a slight ‘pop’ to listen in. 

“Is it that hard to believe, given your parasite?”, Dora replied. 

The blob head slipped up to his shoulder to yell into the phone, 

**“Hey! Who’s she calling a parasite?!”**

“V, she didn’t mean it”, he consoled. 

Dora continued, “It’s a brain implant that enhances latent psychic talents. The most commonly recorded effect was the ability to read other’s thoughts and memories just by looking at them.” 

“ _Riiight_ … but why are you telling me all this, all of a sudden? Maybe we should start with something simple. A dinner date. Y’know? Catch up.” 

“Ugh. Look, Eddie, I need your help. Our only prototype, cyclops, was stolen about five years ago, and all of the research was lost. It’s a big deal for Olivia. It was our flagship project. Emphasis on ‘was’.” 

“You want us to help you find it? This cyclops thing?” 

“Spelt P-S-I-C-L-O-P-S. PsiClops. And yes, I’d like you to help me find it.” 

**“PsiClops? That is so incredibly trite.”**

“Yeah, well…”, she answered, giving a slight chuckle, “And in exchange, I make sure my company stays chasing their tail with your whole break-in thing. I can also pay you, in money or information on other… corrupt companies. I know a few. I’d probably get a raise. Olivia likes me.” 

“Okay. Do you have any leads?” 

“Unfortunately, no. And now that the cops are being nosy... Ugh! Some idiot actually called the cops! We are under heavy scrutiny right now, so it will be difficult for us to act directly. I don’t know what’s worse, the cops or the reporters. Err… no offense. 

“Nah, I get it.” 

“All I know is that the entire lab housing the PsiClops project burned down when it was stolen. There was no discernible cause of fire, so, we hypothesized whoever stole it might have had some form of latent pyrokinetic talent. We would call those… well, I didn’t come up with the terminology: ‘mutants’.” 

“A what now?” 

His blob of a symbiote shrivelled slightly. 

**“Eddie, we believe she’s saying they can set things on fire… with their mind. We have encountered some species with similar psychic potentials, though not on Earth.”**

Eddie gulped. Memories of the rocket explosion sprang to mind, and of his other dying. His heart beat a bit faster. He wiped his slightly sweaty palm on his tank-top. 

“Is there a problem?”, Dora asked. 

**“Yes. We decline”** , the alien answered for him. 

Eddie sighed, “Dora, I’m not gonna make any promises. We might look into this. We might not. I don’t know.” 

“Oh, okay. I know it’s a big ask. I didn’t mean to pressure you. I just thought that maybe with your abilities- but, don’t worry about it if you don’t want- I won’t tell Olivia about you either way. I promise.” 

**“Better not.”**

“Venom, she’s a friend, okay? Anyways… so I was serious about dinner.” 

“I’m not sure I want to be your dinner.” 

“What?” 

“Sorry. Bad joke”, she clarified. 

“Ha, ha?” 

**“Doesn’t have to be a joke.”**

“V, now _that_ was a bad joke. Dora, I mean it though… You. Me. Venom. Dinner?” 

“I’m really busy these days, sorry.” 

“What, with a non-existent alien invasion?” 

**“We killed Riot. The Klyntar do not know of this planet.”**

“Yeah! We put a stop to that shit. We saved the damn planet! Nobody fuckin’ knows.” 

**“We remain losers.”**

“Geez, V, didn’t need to put it that way.” 

Dora responded, “Well, also there’s my family. I mean, they thought I was dead…” 

“Ah, right, fair enough. Be with your fam. Well… I’m glad you made it out of that whole Life Foundation fiasco alive.” 

“Same to you, Eddie.” 

“Okay. So… goodbye, I guess?” 

“Bye.” 

She hung up quickly. 

“Huh. Well that was weird. What d’you wanna do now, V?” 

Venom wrapped tendrils around Eddie’s torso, under his tank-top. 

**“Kiss and cuddle.”**

Eddie laughed, “Alright, buddy. C’mere.” 

His dark smile drew near to Eddie’s, to his lips, but then stopped. Eddie knew his other was waiting for him to close the gap, so he leaned into him and pressed a kiss onto the closed liplessness. 

His shoulder and back muscles were being massaged by his bodymate. They were no longer aching like last night, having been healed, but there was still some nervous tension to work through. All things considered, it could have gone worse. 

Eddie could feel the gooey ocean undulating like a tide through every muscle in his body, while also massaging him with external deep-sea appendages. Almost everywhere, he was being kneaded, from within and without. 

**“Just relax, dearest Eddie. We shall take care of you.”**

He smiled, sighing, “What did I do to deserve you?”.

** “No need to do. Just be you.” **

That was only the body. Eddie also laid back, open and pliant in mind, allowing his other to dip into his true thoughts and feelings: a warm lake drenched in love, and in its depths, something slightly darker. He zoned out for a while, staring up at the wet spot on the ceiling which might have been mold. They had the whole day free to just do nothing, to just _be_.

Eddie still couldn’t quite believe it. Last night wasn’t a dream. Well technically it was. However, they really did kiss. Venom had confirmed. 

**“A dreamed kiss is still a kiss. Your primate brain can’t tell the difference.”**

When he had woken up, it was the first thing he remembered. He panicked for all of two seconds, but then he asked himself, 

_What’s the big fuss, anyway?_

He was straight though. Eddie had only ever been with another dude once before, when he was drunk at a college party, and that was just the guy giving him a handjob. He never went any further than that. 

Was Venom a dude though? He usually thought of his alien bodymate as a guy, although Venom never identified as such. Yet that deep, grinding voice was the furthest thing from feminine. 

More importantly though, forget about _gender_. Venom was an _alien_. What they did broke all kinds of taboo. It was _wrong_. And it was _so right_. 

Well, sure, he made out with the alien that he shared a body with. So what? Anybody else in his position would have done the same thing, right? 

Okay, he wasn’t so sure about that last part. 

After a while, Eddie blinked, coming back to the present. There was the smell of faux-cheesy Doritos, the muted news flickering by on the TV, the fridge humming steadily, and a tent in the front of his boxers. 

His bodymate was still massaging his bodily tension away. Every time a muscle relaxed, it was replaced by some new layer of emerging tension, like an unravelling bundle of elastic bands. Venom lay on his sternum looking up at him expectantly, snake-like tongue slithering side-to-side along his wet collarbones. 

An unsolicited image flashed in Eddie’s mind of Venom tying him up in tendrils, completely naked, and he _knew_ that Venom knew. 

Suddenly, for real, his wrists and ankles were bound with black tendrils. Then sharp claws materialized, and they instantly shredded his tank-top and boxers, leaving him totally nude, bound, and hard as a rock. 

“Woah! What the fuck, Venom? Let me go, _right now_ , or I swear-! Hey, what are you-!” 

He looked down at his thigh where Venom’s head re-emerged, a wicked tongue licking along his inner thigh, causing his toes to curl. Eddie couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like for it to wrap around his- 

Then Venom’s tongue really _did_ wrap around the base of his hard cock, but otherwise he stayed still. His symbiote looked up, meeting his eyes, gauging his reaction. Eddie’s breathing and heart-rate had sped up, and he pulled against his restraints. 

“Venom! Holy shit, dude! I didn’t say you could…!” 

He didn’t say he _could_ , but he did think he _should_. His bodymate wrapped his tongue around and around, sheathing the rest of the shaft, but leaving the head exposed. Eddie made a soft gasp, and held his breath. The tongue squeezed lightly. 

“Fuck! Venom, please, we shouldn’t-” 

Somehow, Venom was able to speak still. 

**“We are like water. We will conform to your shape, to your mind. Tell us your fantasy, Eddie, and we shall make it reality.”**

“Dude! What the hell is wrong with y-?” 

But then Eddie saw what he wanted, that is, for Venom to take him fully in his- 

Venom pounced, taking his swollen organ into his fanged maw. 

Eddie’s eyes went wide, and terror thundered through him, but his dick was not bitten off. Instead, it was embraced snugly in warm, silky symbiote mouth. It started sucking. The tongue was slick with saliva, gyrating like a drill around his penis clockwise, then counter-clockwise. Eddie let out a sudden _loud_ moan, and his whole body shuddered violently, struggling against the tendrils holding down his wrists and ankles. 

_I should stop this_ , Eddie thought, _this is so wrong._

But again, it was _so right_. Wet beads formed in his tear ducts, as he tried to bite back the moans that wanted to escape his throat, but they came out anyway. His body slowly betrayed him, rocking back and forth with pleasure in tune with his bodymate’s sucking. Perhaps this counted as a form of masturbation. 

Somehow he knew that if he really wanted his symbiote to stop, and he said ‘no more’, he would stop, but in Eddie’s mind, there were only the words echoing: 

_Yes, Yes, YES!_

He was panting heavily now, tensing his pelvis in vain, still trying to contain his genital pleasure bursting free. 

It’s been so long. 

It’s been soooo _fucking_ long. 

Why did he wait so long for this? They could’ve been doing this from the beginning. It wouldn’t take much more. He was getting close now. 

“Fuck! Don’t make me- Please! I can’t believe we’re- Unghhh! _Stop_ …” 

Suddenly, Venom cruelly withdrew his luscious, obscene mouth, leaving Eddie’s hard cock twitching up and down, slick with saliva, not his, and precum, his. 

“No! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! You fucker!” 

**“You asked us to stop”** , his tempter sneered sinisterly. 

“Please! I can’t-”, Eddie whined, “Unghhh!”.

**“What do you want, Eddie? What do you _need_?”**

Some of the tears had slid down his temples, and now he fought against his restraints even harder, wanting to take himself in his own hands. His cocktease of an alien watched him struggle for a bit, head tilted, amused. 

**“Tell us, dear Eddie. What is your deepest, darkest desire?”**

Eddie forfeited his struggle, and collapsed defeated. 

“You already know… you can read my goddamned mind. Just get it over with, damnit.” 

**“We would like to hear you say it.”**

“Urrrgh… fine... Keep going?” 

**“Keep going where?”**

“Fuck, Venom! Let me finish! Please!” 

**“Finish what? We’re afraid we do not fully understand the complexities of Earth language. You will have to be very specific with what you want us to do.”**

“Oh my god, V, if you keep talking like that, I’ll lose my hard-on.” 

His other watched his penis intently. That thing was not going down. No, he was too close. He needed this. 

“Fuck! Okay, please finish sucking my dick, and let me cum. Happy?” 

**“As you wish, sweet Eddie.”**

Venom motioned to go down on him again. Eddie closed his eyes, and leaned his head back, inhaling in anticipation, but then his cocktease alien continued to drone on. 

**“One more thing, Eddie.”**

Eddie groaned frustrated, scrunching his eyes tightly. 

“What!?!” 

**“Will you regret this when we’re done?”**

His eyes snapped open. 

“Wha-? N-No. I don’t… think so?” 

Then he felt a bit guilty. He had been holding back on his love, and his lust, oh, his _carnal_ _lust_ , from his other for the longest time. This whole time, his other had patiently waited until he was ready, never pushing him too far. It looks like that patience ran out. 

**“We may have jumped the gun on this one. We thought you might be ready because we started kissing.”**

“Venom, can we talk about this after?! You’re killin’ me here.” 

His head bowed, **“As you wish, sweet prince.”**

And the rock-hard penis was once again engulfed with the wet, slick interior of symbiote mouth, which sucked even more fervently now. Two thin tendrils also wrapped around Eddie’s sensitive nipples, squeezing lightly, and they hardened in response. It sent electricity down to his crotch. Eddie gasped, and whispered “Yes…” under his breath, while rocking his hips to the beat of his own pleasure. 

It took little time for him to fall over the point of no return, and like a dam breaking open, he came, cannon exploding into his alien lover’s mouth, his whole body pushing out against his tendril restraints as he moaned in sweet, sweet release. 

Through the alien goo, he could feel his own semen and pleasure being absorbed hungrily, vibrating as his orgasm reverberated through Venom too. Through their bond, Eddie’s own bliss was returned back to him, forming a feedback loop that spiralled up to heaven.

_Jesus. Fucking. Christ._

**Oh, Eddie, Eddie, Eddie…**

As usual, the intensity subsided after several seconds, but Venom did not let up sucking his red, sore cock. 

He squirmed, “Aghh! I’m done! I’m done! No more!” 

Venom lifted his head up immediately. 

**“As you wish.”**

The alien just lay there on his thigh, watching him, waiting. Eddie closed his eyes, panting softly, but laying limp and loose, still restrained by the tendrils. 

Behind closed eyelids, Eddie briefly saw Carl Brock shaking his head at him, disappointed. Venom noticed too. 

After a minute, Eddie said, 

“Let me go.” 

The tendrils released, and Eddie covered his face with his hands. His erection was beginning to subside. 

“You shouldn’t have done that, Venom.” 

**“Eddie… we-”**

“That’s not happening again.” 

**“We jumped the gun.”**

“Yeah. You did. There’s this thing called ‘consent’. You’re supposed to ask first”, he said, looking his alien in his frowning crescent eyes. 

What did they just do? Although he had crossed many lines already, for some reason, this one was too far. 

**“It is confusing for us, when you send us so many mixed messages. Part of you says ‘yes’, and another says ‘no’. From where we are, the more authentic response seemed to be-”**

“That’s not a fuckin’ excuse!” 

Eddie jumped up and stormed into the washroom to take a cold shower. Venom receded into his chest, where they shrivelled up meek. He scrubbed soap across his skin furiously. He did not ask Venom to help with the shampoo, nor did Venom offer. He finished showering quickly, threw on some random bedclothes, and went back to pick up his shredded tank-top and boxers, throwing them in the trash. 

His hands were shaking and he was pacing around the room, thinking of something to channel his anger into. He didn’t want to shout at his symbiote, who was already cowering inside him. Venom was silent, though he could still feel his presence, which never left him. 

Eddie just wanted to be ‘alone’, and he could feel his symbiote hurt by that fact. He could tell Venom was holding back his own thoughts and words to avoid further angering him, but what the symbiote felt could not be hidden, and it was the feeling of ‘Sorry’. 

He walked over to open the blinds and window to let in some light and air. It felt so stuffy in here. He needed to breathe. 

Sitting down on his couch, he buried his face in his hands. He felt like crying a little, or maybe saying something to Venom, but then decided against it. 

Instead, he leaned over and grabbed his laptop from the coffee table. He needed something to do, something to occupy his mind. 

_Earlier… on the news. There was something about a gang-related arson? Could be an article._

He’d promised Dora that he’d drop the case on PsiOnyx, which was a real shame given all the work he’d put into it, but he always kept a few other works in progress going at once. Ms. Kao, on the other hand, would be relieved to hear it. 

Eddie began researching into arsons in San Francisco without a known cause of fire over the past few months. Many of the cases involved the deaths of large numbers of gang members, so they were suspected to be acts of gang-warfare. There were civilian deaths too, but that was looking increasingly like collateral damage. Whoever was responsible didn’t seem to mind dealing out _heavy_ collateral damage. The common thread seemed to be that the targets were all rivals of the Wah Ching gang. 

At some point, he said, “Hey, V?” 

No reply. He couldn’t even feel Venom’s presence at all, which was not normal. His symbiote was nowhere to be felt in his body. He stood up suddenly, slamming his feet into the floor, eyes wide, heart racing. 

“Venom?!? VENOM?!?” 

He grabbed at the front of his shirt, pressing his fist against his chest to feel for him, for his other, his other half.

**“We’re here.”**

“Oh thank god, for a second, I thought you-” 

**“We would never just leave you, Eddie. We were masking our presence, because you wanted to be alone.”**

“Okay, well, don’t do that again… you almost gave me a heart attack.” 

**“Sorry”** , his other apologized, **“And we’re also sorry for earlier.”**

“No, _I’m_ sorry. Fuck. I overreacted. I just- it’s like you said before, I’m ashamed.” 

**“We are sorry that we make you feel ashamed. We shouldn’t push you to have… with us. We’re not even human.”**

“Aw, geez, V. Don’t say that. You don’t make me feel ashamed. _I_ do.” 

Venom sprouted a blobby head from Eddie’s chest, considering him curiously. 

**“It’s that man. We’ve seen him sometimes from your stray memories. He looks like you. He makes you feel this way.”**

_My father._

That’s when the pressure valve inside finally released, and Eddie softly cried into his hands. After a minute, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve. 

**“Did we say something wrong?”**

“Shut up, Venom, and kiss me.” 

**“What? Eddie, you are acting strange. But your neurochemistry seems balanced, and your blood sugar-”**

“Look, I don’t know how to answer all your questions, V, I just- I want to show that I’m not ashamed of you. This is the easiest way I know how.” 

His other stretched up near to his face, and Eddie pulled him right into a long kiss, affection passing between their lips, their tongues completing a circuit. Venom didn’t push his tongue into Eddie’s, but Eddie certainly pushed his into Venom’s. After a while, they pulled apart, slightly breathless. 

“Your teeth… they don’t hurt me?” 

**“Our teeth are synthesized from our matter, so they can be made pliant.”**

“Oh. Of course. Uhh…”, Eddie stammered, almost shy now, “Do you- do you think we could try that… again? What we did?” 

**“Will you get angry again?”**

“I won’t.” 

He was already growing to half-mast at the inevitability, but his other still looked unsure. 

“I promise I won’t get angry again, V. Please?” 

**“Could you say that again?”**

“Huh? I… promise I won’t get angry again?” 

**“No, the second part.”**

“Err… please?” 

**“Oh, we do like it when you beg, Eddie.”**

He shuddered. 

**“We just thought of another use for your bedroom mirror.”**

“Oh- oh yeah?” 

**“You can watch what we do to you.”**

A shiver ran down his spine. 

“I’m yours, V.” 

**“Yes…”**

Like a black lagoon, his alien lover flooded out from his every pore below the neck. The ooze weaved and wrapped around him, turning him into a black Christmas present, gifted to his one and only.

**“Mine.”**

*** 


	9. New Born Child

*** VENOM *** 

DAY 4 — NIGHT

The scared, bleating of their prey was sex to their ears, as it fled, and they chased. The cold moon stared dispassionately down at the death games taking place in the animal realms of the coniferous dense backcountry, continuing in all directions forever. The deer was certainly fast, but _They_ were faster. Nothing could outrun _Them_ , when they were merged in their full form, quantum music escalating to form bulking pseudo-muscle. 

Though it was night, they could see perfectly. The prey could also be tracked by its shrill cries and trampling hooves, but it was easier to follow by taste. Their premonitory tongue could already sample their forthcoming meal: rich bloody flesh, red, raw and fresh, spiced with the purple seasoning of fear. 

As they drew near the creature, they lunged, and sunk their sharp talons into both sides of its hide, drawing scarlet ribbons. Its shrieks echoed into the open air, as it fell to the ground, rustling crispy leaves. Their maw opened to reveal a hundred dagger-teeth, and in one bite, ripped out the throat, and the cries were no more. Off in the distance, the hooting of an owl mourned the loss. 

_Didn’t need to pack food after all._

On the night of Day 4, they feasted for the second time. Eddie had researched to make sure hunting was allowed in this part of the forest during this season, though Venom didn’t understand why that was important. 

It had taken them about half a day on The Venomizer to ride up to edge of the forest on Day 1. They hid it under some shrubbery on the side of the highway, and then had made their long trek to the lake. 

Anne was informed of their six-day trip, so that she wouldn’t get worried when they didn’t answer her texts. Ms. Kao had also been notified of the intended vacation.

There weren’t many trails here, and it was treacherous for most unseasoned travellers, with its steep cliffs, raging ravines, mosquitoes, bears, wolves, poisonous snakes, poison ivy, poisonous… you get the idea. That’s just to name a few things. None of that was a problem for Them though, so They pretty much had this entire forest to themselves. 

Their human had told them about the idea of ‘camping’, and he was sure the alien would love it. 

As they cracked open the antlered skull to reveal juicy brain, Venom found that they agreed. 

_Guess we also won’t be needing those pills… the phenyla-phenalyth-?_

**Phenethylamine.**

_Right. That._

Actually, they hadn’t packed much of anything at all. Just a small jar of high-concentration phenethylamine pills, keys, and a wallet with pocket change and a motorcycle license. Venom formed a sort of fanny pack to carry them. That was it. They didn’t even bring a tent or sleeping bag. Their host wanted to ‘rough it’, and he had figured that with Them, they would manage. 

Since they didn’t bring food, there was the slight chance they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves, even with the pills. Of course, that turned out to not be the case, but Venom was prepared anyway. Dan had taught them which organs were safe to eat, if they were in a pinch. Some of the liver and pancreas, but not all of it. One kidney, but not both. Appendix and tonsils; they were useless. Gallbladder is normally necessary for producing bile to consume fat, but Venom could do that for Eddie, so it was also ‘optional’. 

They were immune to poison, nothing here could really hurt them, and Venom could keep their human warm during the cold nights. The symbiote served as his sleeping bag, and also his tent when it rained. When any mosquitoes tried to bite him, they were immediately assimilated into black biomass. 

In fact, underneath their symbiote suit, their host wasn’t even wearing any clothes at all. He didn’t need any. 

“I’m not going outdoors naked…”, their host had initially protested. 

**“If you really wish to ‘rough it’, Eddie, you should do without this piece of modern technology.”**

“But… what if some random hiker sees me? That would be awkward to explain…” 

**“We could form clothes for you in that situation.”**

Eventually, Eddie had conceded, as they knew he would. Other than the motorcycle ride, and when they were fully merged as ‘We’, they hadn’t needed that contingency. 

His human had felt awkward about it for the first day and a half, just walking around the outdoor forest in the nude, full-body tattoos exposed, but then he soon started to really enjoy it. With Venom, his senses were heightened. Together, they could feel the grainy give of the cool soil beneath their bare feet, massaged by twigs and pebbles, and the romantic caress of the curly breeze on naked skin. 

They also left no trash anywhere since they didn’t bring any. 

“I feel so raw, and primal here. Like so connected to everything. Damn. We should do this more often.” 

**“This feeling… it is analogous to an externalized symbiosis... Symbiosis with the environment. Fascinating.”**

There was the sweet, deep-green scent of pine needles, the bronze of fresh pinecones, and also the sickly yellow of musty rotted bark. Eddie even breathed differently here than he did back in the grey city smog. With the unpolluted, bright-blue forest air, his lungs expanded more fully. 

There was also less light pollution. The night sky was filled with visible stars. It reminded the extra-terrestrial visitor of their ancestral history, of their old homes. Even better was the lack of sound pollution. Only here was it noticeable how they’d become accustomed to the constant subliminal droning of the hustle and bustle, the rushing of traffic, and the chit-chattering soundscape of the city. Here, it was quiet and peaceful but for the lush white-noise of the whispering wind on leafy branches. 

Also, they could urinate and defecate just about anywhere they pleased, without needing to hide out in a designated room. They would claw out small holes in the dirt, and Eddie would squat over it. This ancient position relaxed the puborectalis muscle and unlocked the kink at the rectal entrance, thereby straightening the angle of the excretory passageway, and allowing the efficient evacuation of feces. It felt satisfying to defecate in this manner.

**“It is curious that this natural posture has been eschewed in 'civilized society' in favor of the porcelain throne.”**

“Hey, what did I say about shitting in peace?” 

**“Still ashamed about this perfectly natural biological function, Eddie? Well, one more mental barrier to dissolve.”**

And of course, they fucked. Well, they were already doing much of that before they came to this forest, back in their apartment. Once the walls came down, there was no reason to hold back anymore. They did it almost every day, sometimes more than once. Sometimes, more than thrice. 

They had progressed to the point of allowing Venom to penetrate him from behind. Eddie liked to take it, and Venom liked to give it. Anything to make Eddie happy. They made frequent use of his bedroom mirror, because Venom wanted Eddie to know what was being done to him, that it was not just a dream. 

One time, when they were kissing, Venom had tried to stick their long tongue down Eddie’s throat, but shortly afterwards, as he ran for the toilet, he threw up all over the tiles of the bathroom floor. 

Later, they learned how to suppress the gag reflex so that they could deep throat him. ‘Tongue fuck’, technically. Their human submitted, and he was willing to take a great deal from Venom, in an attempt to appease their insatiable appetite, and, oh, were they Always Hungry. Their host wanted to make Venom happy too. 

Eddie had taught Venom about the concept of ‘consent’, a concept almost as strange as that of ‘privacy’. Still, Venom understood that this was important for Eddie, so they tried to learn the rules. 

However, things became more fun when he had introduced the idea of a ‘safe word’. They had settled on ‘New York’, where Eddie was originally from. It turns out that, with a safe word, ‘No’ didn’t have to mean ‘No’ anymore. Venom had taken full advantage of this to test just how much Eddie could take before he gave in and said ‘New York’. It turns out, despite all his feeble resistance, he could take quite a lot.

Now that they were at this lake though, Venom wanted to try something different. It had the right composition of minerals to engage the process. They had been drinking huge amounts of the briny, metallic water over the past few days. They would be ready tomorrow, Day 5, the last full-length day of their trip, before leaving the following morning. 

After their hearty meal, they were full of new energy. The adrenaline from the chase fed into it. However, the symbiote knew that their human physiology needed to rest. 

**“It is past midnight, and your circadium rhythm says its time to sleep.”**

“Nah, let’s do more hiking. We can see just fine.” 

To make it easier to reason with their host, they metabolized the excess energy in the system, using it to repair the fibers of their over-hiked leg muscles. 

“Uhh… did you just…? I told you not to mess with my brain.” 

**“We didn’t. Just ate your hormones. There’s a difference.”**

“Oh, well, look at _you_ , doctor.” 

Their matter pooled out, suddenly cocooning their human below the neck like a chrysalis, while a tentacle latched onto a branch up above, fishing and reeling the human up, high up to nestle on a large branch. 

“Jeesh!”, Eddie gasped, “You don’t give a guy any warning, do ya?” 

Their host had been sleeping like this, naked in a warm inky cocoon, high up in the tree. He initially protested, wanting to sleep on the ground instead, but they convinced him it was easier to keep him safe while he slept if he was above ground. The human under their care was like a baby bird in their nest, and they were mama bird. 

**“Rest”** , they cooed in a low, rumbling voice that was both commanding, and motherly at the same time. 

“O- Okay.” 

Eddie closed his eyes, which connected him to his deeper child-mind, and he lightly kicked his legs out like he was swimming in the amniotic fluid of birth. 

**“Good night, dearest Eddie.”**

“G’night, love.” 

The symbiote stimulated his pineal gland, a trick that produced the hormone melatonin, to help their host quickly fall asleep. They were getting good at this. Venom reflected on a conversation they’d had the day before. 

* 

DAY 2 — AFTERNOON 

Eddie was trekking up a hill, naked, of course, and nibbling on some red berries they’d found growing on vines on the side of a crumbling cliff wall. Venom had identified them to be safe to eat. 

“Hey… I never ask you about yourself, V. It’s always about me. I feel so selfish. I wanna know more…” 

**“What would you like to know, Eddie?”**

The snaking trail they’d been following through the thick overgrowth seemed to fork in two directions. They could taste a potential snack on the left one, so they took that route. 

“So, something I’ve been curious about, if you split into two, does that mean there are two of you?” 

**“We are an infinite plurality. However, only one connected mass is designated as the ‘core mass’. In a loose sense, that’s where our ‘soul’ is, so to speak. It’s not like we have an actual core, but that there’s a general pattern which repeats itself as a perpetual self-replicating fractal waveform. It is difficult to explain in Earth language. In Klyntari, we could just sing it, and the meaning would be obvious. It is like ongoing music. Splintered biomass units, which are cut off from that main process, can survive for a few hours alone, but will die if not rejoined with the core mass.”**

The black, amorphous floating head suddenly lashed out like a vicious snake into a branch up above, tasting blood. They retracted with the chipmunk impaled on their teeth, chewed again, and swallowed. Just a light snack. Eddie just shook his head, exhaling through the mouth. They continued like nothing happened,

**“But unlike humans, who, if they were to lose their liver, or a lung, would die quickly, symbiotes can regenerate their full biomass even if they are reduced down to a droplet, as long as they are given enough food and time. That is because each droplet, or wavelet rather, stores all of the information of the whole pattern.”**

“Gee, that just went _way_ over my head, babe”, their host replied, clambering bare foot over some soft moss-covered boulders, “But thanks for trying, anyway.” 

**“There is something else we’d like to try while we are here, Eddie. The lake water contains the right combination of minerals. Selenium, manganese, and zinc. Can you try this? You should be able to with the severed frenulum. Coil your tongue behind your uvula, up into the nasal passage…”**

“Wait, you want me to stick my tongue up my nose? Why? That’s gross”, Eddie said with a face, ducking under a thorny branch. 

**“Not your nose, Eddie. Your nasal passage. We’ve read about it. They do it in India. Khechari Mudra. We do not understand the human fascination with religion, but with this gesture, if you press the tongue against your brain from the inside, it will complete a circuit of sorts.”**

“Uh huh. That sounds fuckin’ weird”, he replied before long-leaping over a dried river bed to the other bank, “And what’s it supposed to do?” 

**“When you orgasm, Eddie, we feel it with you. And we wish to share everything that there is to share. What we have not yet given to you is how it feels when a Klyntar spawns. It is analogous to a human orgasm, but not quite. We did not think it would be possible with your human neurology to directly share the experience, but this tongue maneuver may be the missing link. That, and the lake.”**

“A Klyntar orgasm, huh? Fuck it, let’s try it. We’ve already done everything else”, he said, stepping up to the entrance of a small cave on the hill, “And what do you mean by ‘spawn’? Like… give birth? Are we gonna have a symbiote baby? I don’t think I’m ready to be a dad… or a mom, for that matter.” 

**“We could. But we won’t. It is something like halfway between an ejaculation, and an abortion.”**

“Uhmm…! I- I don’t even know what to say to that…” 

That’s when the bear emerged from its slumber. It stood up on its hind legs, roaring. _They_ suited up in black muscle, veined white, baring their claws, and roaring back even louder. 

_Wait… we only attack it if it-_

The bear charged them, and the symbiote grinned wide. 

**“Lunch.”**

* 

The dreamed memory faded abruptly, returning them to their sleeping prince, when they heard the sudden distant howling of a wolf, engaged in its own death games. 

The symbiote breathed with their human host, as he continued to sleep. Eddie slept well, and was no longer having bad dreams. Venom liked to think that they had helped with that, as well as Dan. 

The doctor had taught the symbiote a great amount about Eddie’s body. As their ward softly snored, the alien recalled the last time they were at his office, over two weeks ago. 

* 

The doctor adjusted the slider at the top of the scale, and eyed it suspiciously. The human host shifted uncomfortably from one bare foot onto the other. He was standing on the scale, wearing nothing, other than the symbiote protruding from his shoulder, hovering like a king cobra, and his body tattoos. It eyed the poster on the wall of the hospital examination room. The artistic rendition depicted the skeletal condition of osteoporosis. Venom would make sure that never happened to Eddie’s bones. 

“You’re almost 280 pounds, Eddie”, Dr. Lewis finally said. 

“Shit! 280? I put on weight, didn’t I? I gotta eat for Venom too.”

Yet despite what the scale said, Eddie did not look obese, but he had compared himself to one of those ‘roided up bodybuilders’ at the gym. Of course, their human had no need for steroidal supplements. He often worked out at the gym, and _They_ , together as _Venom_ , sometimes climbed tall buildings, and the symbiote was always there to stitch the torn muscle fibers back together, recovering from any soreness, always, in under a day. Their host had appreciated not needing to wait to recover, but it also meant they had to eat significantly more to fuel their hyperactive metabolism. 

Dan explained, “Well, that, and Venom weighs almost 100 pounds. So that would put you, on your own, at around 190.” 

“Oh, less than 100? You’re lighter than you look, V.” 

**“We can adjust our density to take up more or less volume.”**

Doctor Dan went over to sit next to the computer on the desk, and motioned for their very naked host to sit on the examination table. Eddie kept his hands over his groin, staring at the ceiling. The overwhelming emotion he often felt here was easy to name: Embarrassment. 

“Okay, so let’s go over the test results. I think I may have nailed down the nutrients that Venom needs to survive. The first is a compound found in high concentrations in both dark chocolate and… yes, human brains. It’s called phenethylamine. You could buy that in powder form as a supplement over-the-counter. It’s actually really common.” 

“No way… So we can stop eating… err, people? Is it that easy?” 

The king cobra hissed, **“But Eddie, what about the thrill of the hunt?”**

Dan flashed the alien snake a wary look, but continued, “And… the second chemical is adrenaline.” 

“Adrena-? Y’know… that actually explains a lot.” 

“It does?” 

**“Thrill of the hunt, Eddie”** , Venom smiled triumphant. 

“There are other ways to get adrenaline, V”, Eddie rebuked. 

**“Like meth? Methamphetamine. We enjoyed that.”**

Dan’s eyes widened in surprise, and then he wore a look of amusement, figuring that he shouldn’t be surprised. 

“Oh? Did you, now?” 

“Venom! Dan, please don’t write that down in my medical file…” 

“There’s a lot I don’t write down in your medical file, Eddie”, the doctor reassured. 

Relief flowed through the human’s system when Dan didn’t push for any more details. Then, the doctor stood up, taking a wooden popsicle from a jar, and came up to their human to continue with the physical. 

“Okay, open wide, and say ‘Aaaaaah’”, Dan instructed. 

Eddie opened his mouth, sticking his tongue out, and echoed “Aaaaah”, while Dan stuck the popsicle into the mouth. It left a distinctly wooden taste on the back of the tongue. 

When it was taken out again, the doctor commented, “Your tongue, Eddie… could you lift it up?” 

Eddie did. 

“Hey, Venom, did you sever his lingual frenulum?” 

“My _what_?” 

**“Is that what that flap of skin under the tongue is called? Yes, it was preventing Eddie’s tongue from extending farther out, like our tongue. It makes it easier for us to-”**

“Venom!”, Eddie blushed. 

The doctor continued, “Yeah, I noticed Eddie’s tongue could reach below his chin. And that’s not all… his teeth! They’re a bit pointier than normal.” 

Eddie went over to the wall mirror to inspect his mouth. 

“Shit… you’re right. I guess I never noticed these things ’til now that you pointed it out. It looks kinda _badass_. Haha, I look like you, Venom.” 

**“Tall, dark, and handsome?”**

“Pfft… more like otherworldly ugly.” 

**“Then you are calling yourself ugly.”**

From the wall behind them, Dr. Lewis unhooked a small flashlight device, that Venom now knew was called an ophthalmoscope, and beckoned to check Eddie’s eyes with the bright light. 

The doctor squinted, and remarked, “And your eyes… isn’t your natural eye color blue, Eddie? But now I see… dark waves in your irises, like an ocean at night. My favorite color, Eddie! Wow, that is _soo_ fascinating!” 

The man’s smile was a cross between childlike wonder, and a mad doctor who wanted to dissect his subject to learn as much as possible, something he shared in common with the symbiote. 

Venom also sensed that that look made Eddie feel even more naked than he already was. They revelled in the feeling of their host’s vulnerability. There were fewer barriers standing in the way of their bond. 

**“Look what else we did, doctor.”**

A thin tendril sprouted, slithered to the tattooed pecs, and wrapped around Eddie’s left nipple, squeezing. Eddie let out a yelp, as the nipple let out a brief spurt of milk, some of which got on the doctor’s coat. 

“ _What the fuck_ , Venom! What did you _do_?!?”, Eddie shouted. 

Surprise lit up across the doctor's features, eyes widening even more. However, Dr. Lewis didn’t seem grossed out, as he walked away to casually grab a paper napkin to wipe his coat. He was likely used to having blood spray all over him. The cobra licked its lips, wishing they could watch the surgeon perform an operation sometime. 

**“We got the idea from a dream of yours, Eddie. You remember that time when-”**

“Oh fu- okay, let’s not talk about that right now. Not in front of-” 

Dan grabbed another napkin, and offered it to Eddie, who, blushing, could not even look at him. The tendril grabbed the napkin, and wiped their host’s chest on his behalf, making him frown. 

“Did you increase his prolactin levels, Venom?”, Dan finally asked. 

**“Ah, so that’s what that hormone is called. The endocrine system is a most versatile laboratory. We wanted to see if it was possible for Eddie to lactate like human females.”**

Eddie hissed at the snake through his teeth, “Venom, can you, like, _ask me_ next time before you start playing around with my biology? Next thing you know, I’ll be a woman.” 

“Now there’s an idea”, Dan joked, but then his facial patterns matched Embarrassment himself when Eddie didn’t share the enthusiasm. 

**“Eddie, there are millions of biological processes occurring within your body at any given moment. We monitor and keep your extremely complex system functioning optimally. It would not be practical to ask you about every little detail, nor would we even expect you to possess the vocabulary for it. If you were like Doctor Dan, it might be different.”**

Eddie was about to protest, but then he decided to bite down on his tongue with the sharp teeth, flooding his sensitive pain receptors to cancel out the incoming arousal response. The ‘private’ organ, which was not so private right now, was beginning to engorge. That usually happened at some point during these physicals with Doctor Dan. 

The doctor retrieved a small round plastic container from a drawer and handed it to Eddie, before asking hesitantly, 

“Do you… would you mind, if you filled about an eighth of that with the milk?” 

“Oh geez, _why_?”, Eddie breathed out exasperated. 

“If Venom is playing around with your endocrine system, it will be helpful to make sure everything’s still working properly.” 

“Ugh… fine, I guess…”, he conceded, snatching the container, unhappy. 

At that point, the doctor looked down, noticing that their host’s penis was swelling past half-mast. Eddie bit down hard enough to draw blood on his tongue, which tasted metallic. Dan retrieved a second container and seemed almost to thrust it towards the erection while instructing, 

“Oh yeah, and before I forget, can you get me a sample?” 

“A- a sample?”, Eddie asked, eyes widening. 

“Urine.” 

“Oh. Right. Of course.” 

Venom snickered, **“What did you think he meant Eddie?”**

“Shut up.” 

Dan, noticing their host’s obvious discomfort, looked away and mercifully said, “Okay, well I think you can get dressed now since-” 

Their host didn’t wait for him to finish. He had grabbed his boxers, and was about to put them on, which the symbiote had no interest in helping with. It was only then that Venom noticed. 

**“We think there might be someone outside.”**

“Who’s outside…?”, Eddie asked. 

**“They’re running. Let’s follow.”**

Venom maneuvered their body towards the door, but Eddie protested, “W-wait! I can’t run out like this! It’s a hospital!” 

He turned back to pick up his boxers again, but was struggling to get them on, so Venom forced him to drop them. 

**“No time.”**

Black surged out, interlacing in complex lattices to knit a full black hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, and they burst out of the room into the hallway. They saw patients and hospital staff turn to look at them. 

“Where’d they go?” 

**“Can’t pick up their scent. Too many people in this hospital. We hesitated too long.”**

After looking left and right, they decided to walk back into the room, closing the door. 

“Is everything okay?”, the doctor asked, still sitting in his chair, eyes concerned. 

**“Don’t know. Could have been a false alarm. That can happen.”**

Dan eyed Eddie’s new black clothing from head to toe, and smirked, 

“Now, _that_ , is a cool trick.” 

“Yeah, I know right! It’s _sick_ ”, Eddie bragged, raising his chin.

** What happened to wanting real clothes? **

The synthesized clothes all at once disappeared back under skin, leaving Eddie suddenly stark naked, tattoos bared, except for a pair of black mesh stocking pantyhose that went up to his upper thighs. Venom snickered. 

“Oh, shi- _Venom_! Not cool!”, Eddie yelped, covering his groin, as if the doctor hadn’t already seen him naked this whole time. 

Dr. Lewis chuckled into the back of his hand, trying to hide his amusement. Eddie quickly started getting dressed, hiding his emerging semi-erection. Venom didn’t bother to help. It was more entertaining to watch their host struggle in haste.

After he got dressed, the symbiote sensed an awkward tension between their host and the doctor as they just stared at each other blankly, uncertain as to how to conclude the encounter, which had been awkward for Eddie to begin with. Venom was just fine though. Nobody was in immediate physical danger, so all was well in the world.

Eddie initiated, “So, uhh… how are things with you and Anne? Haven’t seen her in a while.” 

“Oh, you know her, she’s been real busy with work. A real go-getter, her”, replied Dan. 

The current boyfriend of Anne rubbed the back of his neck, and mumbled, “I was thinking of maybe… proposing. No ring, yet, but, I was just thinking…” 

“That’s amazing, Dan! You should totally go for it.” 

Venom could see that their host was being sincere. 

“Do you really think so? I wasn’t sure if it was too soon…” 

“Are you kidding me? Anne loves you. I- I can tell”, Eddie said, slightly blushing. 

“Thanks, Eddie.” 

Dan stepped up close to Eddie, so close in fact, that Venom could smell the mouthwash, sterile blue overkill, from his shiny white smile. He opened his arms, gesturing for a hug, and Eddie stepped into it. Dan hugged him, and Eddie hugged him back. 

In their bond, Venom did not sense from Eddie any resentment towards Dan anymore, not that there was much to begin with. Venom wrapped them both in tendrils, cocooning the brotherly love, making the hug last a bit longer then Eddie would’ve liked, especially since he was still half-hard. The doctor didn’t seem to notice.

“Take care, Eddie and Venom”, Dan said when they finally left.

“You too, Dan.”

** “It has been a real _pleasure_ , as usual, Doctor Dan. Heheh.” **

After the doctor’s visit, they ran into a unisex washroom and locked it. They set the two plastic containers on the sink, as Venom manifested an orb-head rising from Eddie’s chest. 

They pushed the human up against the wall, and forced their tongue into his mouth, kissing him with renewed ferocity, two long tongues dancing together. The symbiote pulled away after a minute, and asked, 

**“What’s our name, Eddie?”**

Their host played along, “D- Doctor Venom…” 

**“That’s right, patient. Time to collect that sample.”**

Tendrils undid the denim jean’s fly, and pulled both them and the boxers down to the ankles, and the straining ‘privates’ in question bobbed free of their fabric prison. Of course, Eddie was still wearing the synthesized pantyhose leggings. As the mesh lattices rippled along his calves and thighs, their host’s legs quivered. 

“Oh god…” 

**“That’s not our name.”**

“Sorry, I meant Doc-” 

They stuffed Eddie’s mouth with an inky ball gag so that he wouldn’t make too much noise. 

It _was_ , after all, a hospital. 

* 

DAY 5 — EVENING 

The sky was streaked in pink and purple as the sun started to set behind an overgrown mountain. Eddie was more relaxed than he’d been in a while, after these past few days. It would be important for him to feel relaxed for this next part. 

They were floating on the surface of the lake, staring at the dream-like, wispy clouds above, the symbiote resting as a black, grinning bubble over the Heart Cave. Their biomass had formed flippers on their human hands and feet, allowing Eddie to easily stay afloat, despite his stomach being bloated with the briny lake water. They would need the minerals for the spawning process. 

The water was chilly, but Venom kept Eddie warm, especially near his hips. He was slightly aroused by that. The two of them could just stay here forever, and the world wouldn’t mind. 

“So… how does this work?” 

**“We will bring you to the edge of orgasm. Then, you will perform the mudra. Then, we will pull you under the water as we initiate the spawning process.”**

“I’m not gonna drown, am I?” 

**“We can filter oxygen from the water through osmosis, and lower your metabolic rate to near-hibernation levels. You will not need to breathe.** **Let’s begin.”**

“Woah! W- wait… _Unghh_ …!” 

Venom had formed a warm, silky black fleshlight around Eddie’s cock and started pumping, first slowly, then quickly. Two tendrils flicked lightly across his nipples, and they hardened. Then they squeezed and tugged at them, triggering the lactation response. They licked the secretions with their tongue. It tasted just like milk, but with a distinctly Eddie flavor. 

** “Maybe we should start eating cereal with this instead?” **

The penis throbbed in their makeshift vagina, as it continued pumping like a piston. 

“Unghh… Fuck!”, Eddie mumbled between moans, “No foreplay, huh love? Just get right to it?” 

**“This part is not the point. But if you insist, Eddie”** , the alien grated. 

Their voice almost seemed to change, and become mischievous, as they teased in a low seductive growl, **“We’ve been waiting** **_so_** **long for this, Eddie. And you’ve been** **_such_** **a** **_good boy_** **, drinking the lake water. Now drink this...”**

They opened his mouth with two tentacles, and stuck a long tongue down his throat. Eddie made a muffled gagging noise. It wasn’t necessary to suppress the gag reflex right now. That would be less fun. 

When Eddie coughed, Venom removed their tongue from his mouth, and their orb-head slid down to the thigh to get a front-row seat on the real action. 

**“Dearest Eddie. You’ve been holding in your bladder this whole time. You have our permission, human. Piss yourself”**. 

Their host shook his head in protest. There was an opening at the top of their rubbery cock-sleeve, exposing the bulbous head of the hard penis. Venom released the bladder muscle, and their host could do nothing as a mineral-rich stream sprayed like a fountain up into the air, arcing back down to splash over his muscled, tattooed chest and abdomen, flowing over his ribs to join the lake water. The deep yellow color signified proper functioning of the kidneys. 

“Ugh… this isn’t really my thing, V.” 

**“Your body says otherwise, sweet Eddie.”**

Venom tilted the sleeved penis upward at a 45-degree angle so that the yellow spray entered his mouth. 

Eddie shut his mouth and eyes, turning to the side, but tentacles pried the jaw open, forcing the human to drink himself. They wondered how many self-sustaining cycles of this he could repeatedly ingest before the toxicity level increased above a dangerous threshold. For the first pass though, technically the second pass, it was harmless. 

“Aaagh! Oh my god!”, his host complained through gargled mouthfuls, “C’mon, dude!” 

**“We are not your ‘dude’. And the only god you can call out to right now, is us.”**

Despite his outward annoyance, Venom could tell Eddie liked being humiliated. It was part of their game, and within the rules. Their human body was, indeed, getting dangerously close to orgasm already, that wonderful peak, but Venom did not let up with the stroking. 

“Oh, fuck, I’m close, V!” 

**“We know. We won’t let you cum though.”**

“Aw, c’mon! Pleeease, Venom!”

In a way, it was hard to say no to Eddie when he begged like this, as they wanted him to be happy. In another way though, the begging only made them want to push him further.

Venom squeezed the perineum muscle from the inside. There were multiple ways to prevent Eddie from ejaculating. Another was to pull the testicles away from the body. They wrapped a tendril around the delicate eggs in the shrivelled sack, and tugged it lightly. Everything was climbing towards that inevitable crescendo. 

**“It’s time, Eddie. The Mudra. Do it now.”**

The flustered Eddie just gasped, “Huh?”, but then he remembered. The tongue curled back behind the dangling uvula, up the nasal passage, which was clear, and pressed its tip against the lower mucosal wall separating from the brain. 

They tasted the sweet, golden nectar of the gods as it was secreted from the pituitary gland between the eyebrows, dripping down the tongue, sliding down the back of the throat. 

Suddenly, lightning bolted from the prostate at the root, up the spine, following up the tongue, and straight to the pineal gland. Eddie’s eyes automatically rolled up into the back of his head, and everything went white. The internal non-ejaculatory, upwards orgasm served as a carrier wave for their unfiltered Love. 

In that same instant, Venom wrapped their human in an egg of black tar, and pulled him down, deep to the kelpy bottom of the lake. The sudden wet sensation triggered the ancient reptilian brainstem, and Eddie started struggling, gasping for air. 

_Drowning! I’m drowning! Help, V!_

**Won’t let you drown, Eddie. Just relax.**

The symbiote noticed that Eddie’s only way to relax was to do Mrs. Chen’s breathing exercises, but that only made him panic more, as he could not breathe. Instead, they deliberately slowed his heart-rate, and absorbed the stressful cortisol spiking through his blood, to artificially induce relaxation. They also stopped sexually stimulating the primate body. They didn’t need to anymore. 

_V? Wha- What’s happening? I’m scared._

**This is the spawning process. It will last about four hours.**

The distinction between their warm silky biomass and the cool water was the first to dissolve. It was no longer clear where one ended and the other began. They felt themselves seeping out into the water, dissolving into it. They were the lake now. 

Eddie seeped out too. It was no longer clear where his human skin ended, and where the mixture of symbiote-water began. Like the sunset horizon, does it split Sky from Earth, or connect them? 

The human host’s skin was no longer a barrier between inside and outside, then, but it was porous and permeable. Eddie was completely open, naked, and vulnerable, just like Venom when they did not have a host.

Their bond expanded until it was no longer really a bond, since a relationship required two, and they were fast becoming One. 

_I’m dying! Don’t let me die, V. I’m not ready to die!_

**We got you, Eddie. You won’t die. You will just be reborn, like a new born child.**

Within the cranium, multi-billion neurons fired all at once, superconducting arc lightning across the neuronal wetware. Hidden parts of their host’s mind which were not in communication were now garrulously broadcasting their information-interchange, screaming their secrets at the top of their lungs.

Some fish had swam nearer to the spectacle, seemingly watching.

Synaptogenesis. The novelty-factor spiked asymptotically towards pure chaos, true quantum randomness, without regard for conventionality. Boundaries dissolved, and all unquestioned assumptions were questioned. Nothing was sacred. Identity. Culture. Morality. Not even Reality. 

Everything was Sacred. 

It was no longer clear which way was Up… 

And which way was Down… 

They were suspended in timeless limbo. 

This singularity-moment was now the center of their universe. 

Now, they were the lake, and they saw how the lake was part of the forest, and the Earth. They were also the cloudy sky, and the sun and the moon. The world was _Theirs_ , and the world lived, and moved, and breathed, and felt, and smelt, and tasted through _Them_ as the conscious apparatus. _They_ were the eyes and ears of the universe. 

The overwhelming sensory revelation sent the neocortex into overdrive, trying to control the chaos, to have it all make sense again, to go back to just being little ‘Me’. 

Eddie struggled against the womb of darkness, Venom’s amniotic sac, and the sensation of drowning vertigo tugged in every direction at once. The sensation triggered a struggle of falling up, and falling down, and falling all around, and every which way, he was falling. 

Falling. 

Falling. 

Anywhere there was a direction, that way, the human fell. 

But slowly, slowly, slowly, as the human gave up his struggling, he stopped falling. 

He realized he was _Floating_. 

And the more he let go into their space, into Venom’s all-encompassing embrace, the more he was _Cradled_. 

The symbiote flooded him with their Love, steeping him through every pore of his being. The human began to cry, and they cried with him, but they didn’t know why. 

Every wavelet of their biomass unfolded like fractals within fractals, rewriting the human nerve endings they were spliced to. The lake tasted pink-orange, their confusion was twenty-six, and all the fish around applauded as if to say, “About damn time, you two”. 

_Oh god, I’m losing myself… I’m losing… who even am I?_

**A part of the greater pattern.**

Together, they both saw a hand rise up, if there was even an ‘up’ anymore, pointing. It looked like their hand, the black taloned hand of their full form as ‘We’. It began to point towards where they needed to swim. But it did not point up, or down, or forward, backward, left, or right. It did not point in any direction that could be pointed to ordinarily. 

Yet somehow it pointed, and there it was, hidden in plain sight, and they simply understood where that place was. They had never left, nor could they ever leave. It was called ‘Home’. 

An eel swam into view. Its electrocytes flared, and all the water splashed with rippling electricity. The shock travelled through their rubbery material, and momentary telepathic connection was established. The eel simply greeted, “Welcome home”, before swimming away. 

_If that’s who I am… Then, who are… who are you?_

**We are water, we shape ourselves to your form. The whole world bows to you, sweet prince.**

After an Eternity, when they finally swam up to the surface, they were greeted by a starry night sky. There were thousands upon thousands of glittering jewels, twinkling with boastful pride. 

As they stared up at the marvel, they felt Infinity stare back. 

A rippling shudder passed through them, rippling with the entire lake itself, though they did not feel cold. 

All the worlds and all the hosts the symbiote had ever visited were there now, their memories adorning the sky dome. The stars were pinholes poked through the dome, and That which shined through, there were no words in Earth language to describe. They could only bow in silent reverence. 

_And, who are ‘We’?_

But they both already knew the answer. They stretched their arms wide to hug the sky, and said in unison: 

**“We are Venom.”**

* 

DAY 6 — MORNING 

The whirring of an 18-wheeler truck whizzed by up ahead, even while their vision still revealed only thick forest undergrowth. The symbiote had taken the form of an unzipped black leather jacket, black jeans, and boots. There was no shirt beneath the jacket, though, because it was cooler this way, both literally and figuratively. They also formed a dark stringy necklace around the neck, accompanying the chest tattoos, just for extra style. 

At last, they had found it again under the piles of branches they’d hidden it under: The Venomizer. With one arm like a black symbiote tree trunk of tentacles, they lifted their ride, and carried it just further ahead to the first sign of civilization they’d seen in days: the highway. 

Eddie swung onto the seat, turning the keys in the ignition. Vroom, Vroom. 

“Ready to go home, babe?” 

**“We are already Home.”**

“Heh. Yeah… I know. I- I see that now, V. Thanks for showing me.” 

**“You’re welcome. But yes, we also miss just hanging out at the apartment. There is a different taste to it. Different flavors of Home.”**

Venom formed a black cape behind, and a toothy black helmet over the cranium.

Long, empty pavement stretched ahead into the event horizon of infinity. The road was ahead of them now, and so was their life, together as ‘We’.

“Hang on tight, babe, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride.” 

Vroom, Vroom. 

*** 


End file.
